Introduction
The community meeting I had the opportunity of attending was a common city council meeting for the city of Bloomington. While the meeting was open to any public discussion from residents, the city had planned topics of the merging of the utilities and public department office proposal and parking enforcement of public scooter-sharing services. This specific meeting was offered both online via Zoom and in-person at the Bloomington city hall to the general public. Although both online and in-person options were offered, the meeting found itself relatively lacking in attendance overall. The only in-person attendance outside of the city council board members were three representatives from the public works department, the utilities department, one member of the ADA committee, and a Bloomington town sheriff. Online attendance totaled to only twenty-two members from the general public.
Scooter Parking and Enforcement
The first topic discussed was the parking and parking enforcement of public-scooter services in the city. The introduction of companies such as Lime, Bird, Veo, and more have brought hundreds of scooters all across the city of Bloomington over the past few years. Their presence has seemed to bring more and more problems for the city though since they have been introduced. The biggest problem this topic came to discuss about the scooters is the parking problem that has been created. The city has a contract, which we actually learned during the meeting is an expired one, that identifies specific parking locations in Bloomington for the scooter services. Even with the companies forcing parking in specific locations in Bloomington, the scooters find themselves in problematic locations blocking vehicle parking and pedestrian walkways.
The public works representative presented a research project that has been ongoing regarding these parking and parking enforcement issues. The department has been collecting data in their pilot program for the past year on these parking issues while also making corrective actions to put them in their appropriate parking locations. They have been contracting temp agencies twenty-five hours a week to collect violation numbers and make these corrective actions. Throughout the pilot program, they have documented 605 violations throughout the city. 
They plan to keep this program ongoing to collect more data before creating a proposal to alleviate this issue.
The city council members were very vested in this topic and the pilot program. They came prepared with questions for after the presentation and asked them on the fly during the presentation. Some members went as far during the presentation to push impounding the bikes and trying to ban the scooters permanently. The members provided helpful discussion during the questions period suggesting working with the parking committee to document violations, giving the scooter companies maximum violation quotas that would result in a banning of the specific company, and figuring out ways to work with the university to better collaborate with the companies. As the questions opened up to the public, a Bloomington resident came prepared with pictures and was upset with the pilot program on the city. He presented images of his daily walk that he takes and snapped pictures of every scooter violation he found during one of his days. The images presented thirty-five different violations on his hour long walk. He pressed the public works department thinking that they did an inadequate job in finding violations. He felt they should have found way more violations in a year given how many he found on his hour long walk.
Public Works Department and Utilities Department Office Merger Proposal
The final topic discussed was the merging proposal of the Bloomington public works and utilities departments’ office spaces. The departments have submitted a proposal to coexist under the same roof to open up more storage potential for both departments. Currently, the departments feel that they are at maximum with their current storage solution and need more space along with roofed storage spaces for important equipment. Two representatives were present from each department to explain the project to the public and answer questions from the city council board members. It was a prominent topic for the city to plan for as this is currently budgeted to be a thirty-eight-million dollar project for the city and the departments.
Meeting Conclusions
The meeting concluded with an open session to the public and members for any topic of discussion. One public member honored the death of a wheelchair bound teacher in the community as a representative of the ADA committee. After the honoring, the city council 
members made recommendations for a commissioner member of the new CBCI (City of Bloomington Capital Improvement). They each stated their opinions on an appointment on a member of the commission.
Utilizing Smart Technologies for Better Scooter Parking
In terms of building smart city technologies for topics discussed in the city council meeting, scooter parking is the most applicable for new, smart city infrastructure. What I felt could most improve this problem is dedicated scooter parking, or “scooter corrals” as many cities are calling them now. Bloomington has tried to combat poor scooter parking by forcing parking, most often at public bike racks. As mentioned though, the scooters still find themselves in unconventional locations. I feel that even though parking here makes sense to an extent, users still do not feel like this is their appropriate spot. Creating dedicated corrals with proper marking and identification would not only enable better parking for users, but also help educate the public on proper parking locations. Having specific scooter signs that indicate parking would help show users and other pedestrians that this is a dedicated spot for scooters in the city. As mentioned from the Zagdaily research linked below, a research they conducted found that most scooter riders care about parking properly but said the number one reason they mispark was because of unclear and confusing rules on where to park. Washington D.C. has even already implemented infrastructure like this (https://ddot.dc.gov/page/bike-and-scooter-corrals). 
Protected and dedicated scooter corrals are being implemented within the city to develop better parking behavior. Even with the apps indicating where they need to park, it becomes confusing when trying to translate it to physical locations. Some companies are even helping cities by creating dock-based parking stations. As explained in the unique scooter-sharing company (Flash) linked below, a different approached is being taken where the scooters are charged while parked via a dock charging station. Bloomington working with scooter services to develop a dock-based system could help alleviate many parking issues and even decrease costs associated with having to hire contractors to charge the scooters in third party, offsite locations.
Conclusions
While Bloomington is now experiencing this parking problem, luckily cities and governments all over the United States are experiencing the same problems and want to find a solution. Cities all across are coming together to conduct better research on the parking for cities to find the best solution if they are going to be here to stay. We also cannot forget that even though these scooters have been around for a few years, they are still extremely new to the public. They will continue to undergo massive development and there is only room for improvement. They will also continue to educate the public more and more. Humans will continue to learn how to be better users as they continue to be prominent all around the United States.
Handouts/Proof of Attendance
Public Works and Utilities Merger Presentation
Citations
https://zagdaily.com/opinion/for-tidier-streets-and-pavements-build-more-scooter-parking/
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