The Bloomington City Council approved annual salary adjustments for city employees and again delayed the proposed Stadium District in its regular session Wednesday night.
The city increased the salaries of employees with city police and fire departments, city department employees and city clerk employees through a 2.7% cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. Bloomington City Clerk Nicole Bolden said the deputy clerk of communication and outreach position will receive an additional three percent raise for “longevity.”
This comes after Mayor Kerry Thomson recommended a COLA as the “best way to move forward,” considering Senate Enrolled Act 1. SEA 1 phases out “critical” local income taxes and limits the city’s access to short-term bonding for capital projects.
Ordinance 2025-40 will adjust city department employees’ salaries starting Jan. 1, 2026, yet some council members indicated increases do not adequately reflect Monroe County’s cost of living.
Council president Hopi Stosberg said COLA increases are easy to implement in the short-term, but they can widen wage gaps because those with lower salaries see smaller effects. For example, Stosberg said, some positions could see a $950 raise, while others may receive $3,500.
The council amended its pay grade structure in June 2024, categorizing positions within a 14-grade pay structure for non-union employees. For grade one non-union, full-time city employees, the minimum salary is set at $36,387. For grade 14, the minimum salary is $135,216.
“I’ll once again raise the issue that it’s important to kind of look at that in the future and not necessarily always give static, across the board COLA increases,” Stosberg said.
The ordinance set the minimum hourly rate of city employees at $16.66, which council Vice President Isabel Piedmont-Smith flagged as not reflective of Monroe County’s cost of living.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator tool states a living wage for a single adult without children in Monroe County is $20.96. In Bloomington, it is $20.85.
“$16.66 is not something you can actually live off of,” Piedmont-Smith said.
Piedmont-Smith asked whether there has been consideration from human resources to revise Bloomington’s living wage ordinance to match reality, and she would like to work on revisiting it before next year.
“We haven’t had that conversation at this time,” Sharr Pechac, director of human resources, said. “We do realize it is expensive to live in the city of Bloomington, and we try to be as competitive as we can within the budget constraints.”
The council unanimously passed the ordinances on COLA, with all council members present.
Resolution 2025-18 was introduced during the council’s Sept. 30 regular session, seeking to rename the area surrounding Miller-Showers Park the “Stadium District” for marketing and promotional purposes. The resolution met opposition from Maple Heights neighbors amid concerns the renaming would strip away the neighborhood’s character.
The council voted to postpone discussion of the resolution to Wednesday’s meeting, pending map changes from Geographical Information Systems to exclude residential areas to answer residents’ concerns.
Councilmember Kate Rosenbarger proposed to postpone discussion of the resolution further to speak with residents of other neighborhoods affected by the renaming.
“Residents who live in Maple Heights, at least, don’t want to live in a district called the Stadium District.” Rosenbarger said. “And I think it is important to feel proud of what your area is named.”
She said this would allow time for surrounding neighborhood associations to get the resolution on their agendas for a meeting scheduled toward the end of November.
“I think it is that big of a deal that we shouldn’t be rushing this name, and we need to have the public weigh in on it the way we have public weigh in naming other things in our city,” Rosenbarger said.
The motion to postpone passed unanimously 8-0 with Councilmember Dave Rollo out of the room, and the resolution will be revisited at the next regular session Nov. 5.
Stosberg said she plans to send the final map from GIS to concerned neighbors in Maple Heights so they can ask questions before it is presented to the council.
