A plan that guides future growth in Bloomington is moving forward.
Despite one member’s resistance to language about student housing, the Bloomington Plan Commission on Monday approved the comprehensive master plan draft. It now heads to the Bloomington City Council.
What comes next may either be a straightforward adoption by the city council or something more akin to government table tennis. Regardless of the steps it takes to get there, the plan commission continued the process of formalizing the way Bloomington makes its growth decisions. Commission members Nicholas Kappas, Heather Maritano, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Joe Hoffmann, Darryl Neher, Andrew Cibor and Carol Stewart Gulyas voted in favor of forwarding the amended document to the city council.
Commission member Brad Wisler voted against the draft’s approval, citing language about student housing as a cause for concern.
“My hope for this document is that we do address what I believe is probably the most significant issue facing our community, and that is the notion of segregation — both in terms of use and population,” Wisler said. “We have to get away from putting one group or class of people here, and another group of people over here. It really concerns me the way these last few amendments were written. I don’t think it’s appropriate for it to have language to target one particular group of our community.”
Wisler was absent from the last meeting’s discussion of two student housing-focused amendments, due to bereavement leave. He said the document overall does paint a picture of a more integrated community, but that the language as it stands isn’t the proper approach to bring people of different backgrounds and stages of life together.