Good evening everyone and welcome. I will call our Bloomington City Council listening session to order. Tonight is Monday, April 27th. Thanks everybody for being here. We've had two people call ahead asking to speak. Uh Tim and Robin Mullik
Robin Robin. No R. Uh so those are the only two who called ahead. Were you hoping to speak this evening? Others >> I'm with Tim. >> You're with Tim? Yeah. YouTube. >> All right. Well, what we'll do is uh
we'll start with Tiana and if we have uh others show up, Robin shows up or others, we will talk to them. But if you could please come up and uh I think the microphone is on and speak into the mic, please. And um identify yourself. And what we typically do is try we usually parse out the time for everybody, but
we'll uh what we usually do if there's not enough people to fill the time, we basically say we're not going to let you go longer than 10 minutes, but we'll >> we'll have a conversation. >> Yeah. I appreciate I appreciate >> I'm the gambling manager for the American Legion
>> and the agitant soon to be again but also said that I can speak for them as well. Um I wanted to point out I'm also a I've been a journalist since I went to Iowa State graduated in 1997. I've covered a
lot of cities. Um, I want to point out that the community survey about the charitable fund, you know, asked the city whether they ought to set up charitable fund and, you know, require charitable gambling organizations to contribute.
Why did they avoid the word tax? You know, there's the word tax is not anywhere to be found in there. a tax would be honorous um and would take away from any of the programs we support. We just went uh through this three or four
years ago and the city council been kind at that time to take it up and it seems like pretty soon that we just decided not to do. um you know if we implement this tax
in the city speak at it we have a veterans day appreciation dinner that pays for that city but we basically fund it um and we have helped the city with the veterans memorial and we are happy to help the city with other projects we
got a couple years that we were trying to buy a van so we could take our honor guard places and veterans to events like Veterans Day on the Hill, but we have um consistently funded fireworks and contributed to summerfed and we were
already in talks to do it again this year. Um so, you know, we have a strong uh municipal pride and we want to support programs. Um it is my belief that the city can donate to can request
funds. They don't need to mandate it. If there's a basketball court or something that the city really has its heart set on batting cages for red hats field, you can ask um charitable um licensed charitable organizations to donate to it within the city. In fact,
the League of Minnesota cities says so on its website and I've asked for clarification from their research team because I have other cities and they do it just like did it school district does it other
cities do it. I know a network of people who live across the state through the American Legion and they've never heard of a city not being able to request funds for programs that are uh as long as they are in the public interest like
offsetting poverty park equipment um maybe it's a youth program uh but you know it's not going for water bottles of say the city of Bloomington um there are some exceptions
Like I know in gambling I cannot donate to law enforcement agencies and law enforcement agencies not request citable gambling but the parks department can you know so I think we need to revisit um talk to the league of Minnesota cities and
revisit this uh issue about how we can raise some funds for some projects in Bloomington if we want to help fix up the animal shelter and things like that. Um, you know, I wouldn't want to have to be able to say that we can't give any local uh governments anymore. Like the school
district says, "Hey, we need some help with coaches headsets or some other thing that the high school uh senior class party. Oh, go talk to the city. They've got your money." That's where I'm going to have to say, "They took it from us. Now we can't afford to give it
to you. We give out lots and lots of scholarships. Go talk to the city. they've got your money. Um, I want to remind you that Anoka this past month implemented the same 10% tax and it it had such a community outcry that last week the city council repealed
it. So, you will see the same thing if we do this here. Um, I think a lot of people aren't quite aware of it that survey. I understood what it said, but we already paid 33% to the state government and the next highest state is New York with 5%.
Uh the city taking 10% makes it 43%. Nearly half of our hard work would be taken by officials who did 0% of the work to earn it. I work hard for um raising this money. Many of our people are volunteers like with BCAF, the Bloomington Kennedy Activities Foundation and Legion Baseball. You
would be essentially taxing volunteer labor. So I hope that makes you feel good. >> One option in the survey called for requiring organizations to have a certain number of members live in Bloomington. And I'm sure post fight 50 would pass this test, but I want to point out that this requirement would be
unconstitutional. Uh the US Supreme Court has ruled consistently that government cannot compel organizations such as churches and civil groups to turn over their membership list or donor list to uh or their addresses. The most notable
landmark case is NAACP versus Alabama. You can remember your civil rights movement uh schooling in 1958. The Bloomington city clerk already has tried to compel me to turn over the individual addresses of our honor guard members,
which is a violation of the constitution in she. I do support having the ordinance requiring the licensed nonprofit to be based in Bloomington or at least the trade area. We have far too many out of town gambling operations in our fair city. I'm glad that this is being
addressed. So, you know, we have like the Minnesota Youth Athletic Services. They do cowboy jacks and they do the new um place that used to be Quattro Milpass. Um but I saw their annual report and I
could not make heads or tails of what is exactly going into Bloomington, not so I do commend the city clerk for trying to do a deep dive on some of these city reports that get filed annually. And I told her that I'm really glad that she
is looking into this because you know we have Uh we do our best at the Legion to be among the best in the state for following the rules. As ACM often ask me to testify at the legislature. You know, we have a reputation for doing things
correct and above board and transparent within the Legion here in town. Um but I do think we have some people whose reports aren't necessarily as above board as as ours. Um and in fact, ours is at 70%. Um, I don't really support a
measure to increase the 60% threshold when we as a city just increased it from 30% about three or four years ago. Why revisit this already? We give it 70% and ours is probably really 80% except our accountant sometimes classifies some of
the scholarships as outside because the kid might live in Iowa City and the accountant doesn't know that this person's connected to someone in Bloomington. So, if I really got on them, I could get them to up it higher, but I let it go because we're already passing. Um,
so, uh, we do help in some ways in the region, like we fund the bingo at the Minneapolis veteran. There is no veterans closer than the Minneapolis veteran. I'm sure there are some Bloomington veterans in that veteran song and they have bingo. They
play like quarter bingo. We donate 2,000 and over the course of the year that quarter bingo gets spent and maybe it even takes a year and a half to two years sometimes to get spent and then we reimburse the fund. Um, and our volunteers go over there to help run the
quarterly, you know. So, this is outside of our trade area, but I think it's a viable thing that helps the region. We donate to every third Saturday. How many people have heard of that? >> It's in South Minneapolis outside the trade area. And I'm sure there are people from Bloomington and Richfield
who use their services. And I think it would be a shame if we had a situation where we could no longer help them. We also donate to a fund that is the Minnesota Veterans Assistance Fund for veterans are in places that they don't have the means to get the help like they
do in Bloomington. I have been asked by the city um with previously there was a veteran who was going to be homeless if they didn't catch up on the rent. they had a the a Bloomington social worker and we kept that person from going out on the streets. We've helped people who
lost their apartment to a fire and it wasn't their own fault the apartment next door caught on fire to theirs and they had to have shelter some. We've helped veterans in town that have been talked to us by the Henipin County Veteran Service Office is another example of here's the county asking for
gambling dollars to help somebody. So, and as you know, it's easier to prevent homelessness than to fix it. There's poodles of other stories that I won't spare. I won't go into it, but I do believe there is um no need to change the 60% threshold even though I myself
may not be able to be affected by it. I do think there is a place for helping things region and I hope that you trust our judgment to decide that overall that we're trying to do what's best for Bloomington and the Bloomington area. >> That's it. Well, thank you, Tim. I
appreciate that. And uh a couple of things. Uh I fully acknowledge that the Legion VFW Club, you guys do great work in town. So, thank you so very much for the outreach that you do and the work that you do and the services that you provide and just to being a presence in this community like few other organizations really are. You're a great
presence. I won't dispute that at all. Uh I also want to clear up for uh some of the newer council members, if you haven't heard, we did talk about this three or four years ago. You'll hear more later this evening. Uh it's it's a study session is uh item that we've got tonight where we're starting the the conversation about this about possible
changes to our charitable gambling uh rules and regulations and distributions and so on. It's not a public which is why Tim is here speaking tonight because he wanted an opportunity to give us a little bit of background if it does advance and if we direct staff to move forward. I mean, ultimately, yes, it
would go to a public hearing much like it did I don't even remember when that it was when we talked about this last. It was, you're right, it was like three or four or five years ago, as I recall. >> Uh, so, uh, if it ultimately did get to that as a public hearing, we'd expect to hear from you again and I'm sure a lot
of other folks as well. So, >> uh, but I appreciate your I appreciate your input and I appreciate the the perspective that you bring and as I said, I appreciate the great work that that you folks do. So, thank you very much. >> Thank you. Uh, council member Dallas, really quick >> while I while you're here, you can probably weigh in on something else.
Another item on the study session tonight that you may have an opinion on that I'd love to hear perspective on is um we don't have any mechanism to take away that right from somebody if they violate something or anything. There's nothing in the process that allows us to say you can no longer be that gambling
designation. Um, we're going to have to address something around that too because you know uh to your point once you're in there we it's impossible for her to get you out even if you do violate things. Not that you're guilty of that in any way, shape or form. Open question to you about whether or not you support that.
>> Uh I think that's an excellent point. you know, use the the MAS as the exemplary, what if they're turning thing at the end of the year is required to file and it's out of, you know, they're only donating 20% to Lington even though
the rule is 60% and used to be 30%. And really, you know, I support that. Um, the other thing I want for I should add >> really quick, we got to wrap up. Yeah, one more very quickly. Last time the previous city clerk appoint
>> yeah if we if we move forward I would expect that there's going to be a lot more outreach other than just the the survey that went out and the let's talk Bloomington page and that kind of thing. I'd expect there'd be a lot of this. So >> all right, thank you so very much. Thanks. I'll >> ask once again if anybody else in the
room would like to speak on anything. All right. As I said, we had one other person sign up, but now we're 15 minutes in and I don't see that person. So, council, I would entertain a motion to adjourn our listening session and head downstairs for our council meeting.
>> Second. >> Motion by council member Robertson, second by council member Carter to adjurnn this evening. No further council discussion on this. All in favor? I. Motion carries 6. Thank you so very much. Thank you much, Dan. Appreciate you being here tonight.