The era of unanimous votes on the Bloomington City Council may come to and end in January, with one newly elected council member planning to be a dissenting voice, if not a disruptor.

Mayor Tim Busse easily won reelection, as did five incumbent council members. The sole new member will be Victor Rivas, who won in the Fourth Ward after Pat Martin did not seek reelection.

Bloomington's City Council is nonpartisan, but Rivas is aligned with conservative activists in the city and has a starkly different vision for Bloomington than the other council members. Over the last decade, the council has been reliably progressive, nearly always voting 7-0. Looking ahead to his council service, Rivas said he understands he's likely to be outvoted unless he works for common ground.

"To get anything done I have to work with everybody," Rivas said. "I know it takes a lot of compromising to accomplish what needs to be accomplished."

The Fourth Ward, the northern and eastern section of the city Rivas will represent, is home to the Mall of America, Bloomington's section of the Blue Line light rail and a thicket of mixed-use apartment buildings springing up around the train stations — as well as older, less-affluent neighborhoods and the city's two mosques.

Rivas campaigned on skepticism around the city's goals of developing urban-feeling, walkable neighborhoods, favoring single-family houses and more spread-out neighborhoods. He said he doubted new apartments were really within reach for many people.

He also opposed the sales tax measures that voters approved last week, saying the upgrades to the Nine Mile Creek regional trail, renovations for the Bloomington Ice Garden and new community center seem to benefit residents of west Bloomington, who tend to be more well-off.

Busse had campaigned with Rivas' chief opponent, Isaak Rooble, a business owner and DFL activist. But Busse said this week he looked forward to working with Rivas, saying that a new member of the council always changes the discussion and dynamics.

Busse said the council's unanimous votes have been a product of intense discussion and consensus-building, not lockstep thinking.

"Even though we end up with 7-0 votes, it wasn't a 7-0 vote when we started the discussion," Busse said.

Rivas said that even though he disagrees with Busse and other council members on many issues, he does not intend to be an antagonist.

"I'm not going in there to create dysfunction. I'm going in there to rep the people that voted me in," Rivas said. "I am willing to work with anybody."

The 2023 election was the highest-turnout city election in Bloomington in two decades, according to City Clerk Christina Scipioni, with more than a third of registered voters casting a ballot.

It was the first time all six council seats and the mayor were on the ballot at the same time. Usually the two at-large council seats are elected for staggered terms. Jenna Carter was reelected to her at-large seat, and Chao Moua was elected to the other at-large seat, after the other council members appointed him to fill the seat left vacant in early 2023 when Nathan Coulter stepped down to serve as a representative in the state Legislature.