Members of the Normal Town Council say the City of Bloomington needs to reconsider their move to terminate the Metro Zone agreement in order to regain trust.
During Monday night's meeting, Mayor Chris Koos said the contract isn't terminated yet because both municipalities need to negotiate before any changes are made.
Koos said he needs to see a demonstration of honesty from Bloomington's aldermen to believe their assurances.
"I know before their last meeting, four of us had talked to five of the Bloomington council members who said that they were in favor of suspending the agreement as we had proposed," said Koos. "When the vote finally happened, there were only two left. So those kinds of things make it a little more difficult, but we've got to try."
Koos said he wouldn't be surprised if a joint discussion doesn't happen in the future. He also said there are many different options, which he didn't outline, that council members are discussing before thinking of litigation.
Council Member Kevin McCarthy said Bloomington aldermen need to come back to the table to renegotiate the agreement. McCarthy said trust is lost if a long-time business partner is willing to take unilateral action without regard to the impact of neighbors.
He said aldermen need to prove they will be a good faith partner moving forward.
"I'll wait until that happens before I make any decision," said McCarthy. "You don't want to forecast a bad relationship. You want to give a good relationship every opportunity to exist if you can. If that doesn't happen, then we'll have to figure out what we're going to do after that."
McCarthy said renegotiating the deal could help elected officials get back to working on the positive things that could be done for the community.
Also during the meeting, Mayor Koos addressed changes to the public comment process. Koos said each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak leading to a total time of 20 minutes of public comment.
Staff will create an ordinance for the changes to be approved during the next meeting.
