Appearing on Thursday in front of around 130 people at the monthly meeting of the Building Association of South Central Indiana (BASCI) at the Bloomington Country Club were Julie Thomas and Peter Iversen.
The two are candidates in the Democratic Party’s primary race for Monroe County commissioner District 2. Thomas is the incumbent, who has served in the role since 2013. Iversen is currently in the middle of a four-year term serving on the county council.
To run for the seat, Thomas and Iversen are required to live in District 2, which coincides with Bloomington Township. That is the northern half of the city of Bloomington.
But the vote for county commissioner seats is countywide. That means any eligible voter who participates in the Democratic Party’s primary will have a choice between Thomas and Iversen.
Asking the questions on Thursday was John Fernandez, who is a former mayor of Bloomington. They covered topics like economic development, housing, and land use.
Location of new Monroe County jail
A bit of news came out of Thursday’s event, related to a specific land use question—the pending choice of location for the planned new county jail.
Based on Thursday’s candidate forum, it is now looking a lot less likely that the county-owned Thompson PUD site will be chosen as the location of a new jail. In any case, there’s not unanimity across county councilors and county commissioners about a current preferred choice of a site.
It is the board of county commissioners that will make the decision on site selection, but the choice would have to be supported by the county council—which, as the county’s fiscal body, holds the purse strings. That means both Thomas and Iversen are part of the decision making process for selection of a new jail location.
Location of new Monroe County jail: Thomas
On Thursday, Thomas was first to respond to a question about where the jail should be located, and when that decision would be made.
Thomas described the county-owned Thomson PUD site as having “some significant issues” that county officials were not previously aware of. In the last part of 2023, the Thomson PUD had some momentum behind it as a potential location, after the Bloomington city council a year before had rejected a rezone request for a different parcel inside city limits.
Thomas said that “through serious research and homework” the county officials had learned there would be considerable costs connected to the Thomson PUD site, which could also delay construction. Asked for specifics, Thomas said that a Duke Energy high power line would have to be moved. She added, “There’s also tons of dirt that has to be moved.”
About a different location besides the Thomson PUD, Thomas said, “I can’t say where, but I can say right now that the sheriff’s department and board of commissioners…agree on an idea of what we think is the best location for a facility is.”
Location of new Monroe County jail: Background
One factor in the mix for a choice of location for a new jail is whether to co-locate other justice services at the same spot. When the county went to the city council in late 2022 to ask for a rezone of some land in the south part of town so a jail could be built there, the initial plan had been to build just a jail with possibly one satellite courtroom.
That is, the thinking was not to build a facility where the jail, all the courts, prosecutor and public defender are co-located. But the subsequent feedback from the legal community was that co-location was strongly preferred.
Last year, the justice fiscal advisory committee (JFAC) of the county council included in its report a recommendation: “Determine the fiscal impact of co-locating the courts with a justice complex, and at what point during the transition to a new facility that co-location would be most cost effective.”
It would, in any case, cost a lot more to build a co-located facility than it would to focus just on the jail building. A substantial amount of additional funding could be generated if the county council were to exercise its statutory authority to impose an additional local income tax (LIT) specifically to fund a jail.
In the time since the work of two consultants was delivered to the county more than two and a half years ago, the possibility of imposing an additional LIT to be used for a new jail has received scant public mention.
The conclusion of the consultants was that the current jail is a failing facility that isn’t meeting constitutionally required levels of care.
Location of new Monroe County jail: Iversen
After she indicated agreement between the county commissioners and the sheriff—on an alternative to the Thomson PUD as a jail location that should be investigated—Thomas then knocked the ball into Iversen’s court. She said, “What we’re waiting for is to get a sense from our county council, which is meeting about this issue, to determine: Can we get the funding to build a colocated facility?”
In his response, Iversen stuck to the first part of the question that Fernandez posed, which was about the criteria for site selection. Community feedback is clear, Iversen said: A new jail needs to be close to community services and near public transportation.
“It needs to be close to community services,” Iversen said, “because when the judges release someone from jail, and they’re led out into the alley in their underwear, they need a place to go.” The new facility needs to be close to public transportation, Iversen said, because “We cannot let people out of jail in a field somewhere. That’s not the right thing to do.”
To make the point that a jail should focused on “the people who come in contact with our justice system,” Iversen told a story about a man he called “Tom” who struggles with substance use disorder. Iversen said, “Tom has been in and out of our jail. But on the last time, he found sobriety inside the jail. And he used that sobriety to go and work for one of the nonprofits in our town, to go back into the jail, to work with other inmates to improve their lives.” Iversen called that kind of scenario “the future of justice in our community.”
Iversen added, “What we want is a facility that keeps the public safe, but also works with these people who are sometimes struggling with really serious issues, and working to get the help that they need.”
After the forum, Iversen responded to a B Square question about the county commissioners and the sheriff having settled on a site by saying “as of Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.” that he was not aware of that. The time reference was to a joint executive session held by the county council and the county commissioners on Feb. 13 about land acquisition. Another joint executive session of the two groups was held on Jan. 23, 2024.
Asked if it’s fair to say the Thomson PUD site is no longer the leading option for a jail location, Iversen said that there’s not enough information yet, even to say that much. From Iversen’s point of view, the Thompson PUD is still fully in the mix.
There are other sites where the county has not had any kind of geotechnical analysis done, Iversen said. That stands in contrast to the Thomson PUD where a Phase 1 environmental study, as well as a geotechnical review has been paid for.
At an August 2023 meeting, two additional sites, neither owned by Monroe County, were unveiled as under consideration as possible jail locations, but were not pursued at that time. One was south of the Monroe Hospital. The other was north of Bloomington in the vicinity of Arlington Road and SR 46.
Location of new Monroe County jail: Neighbors
Also factoring into the mix for jail site selection, Thomas said, was the perspective of nearby residents. Two meetings had been held with residents near the Thomson PUD site, who were generally not in favor of locating a jail at the site. About that feedback, Thomas said, “That’s the importance of doing this job right. We have to pay attention to what residents want as well.”
Thomas said about nearby residents, “Some of their fears may have been unfounded. But they offered us a lot of insight into what we need to be thinking about when we locate a jail facility.”
Housing: Neighbors
The input from neighbors was also cited by Thomas in connection with several questions related to the need for construction of additional housing. She said, “We also need to make sure that we have time through that plan commission process to hear from neighbors—because they matter, too.”
Thomas continued, “Their property can be impacted by a dense development. Their business could be impacted by dense development. ”
Housing: More units?
Density and the need for additional housing was at the center of Thursday’s discussion about housing.
Before the candidate forum started, CEO of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, and former county councilor Eric Spoonmore, was given time to address the crowd. Spoonmore focused his remarks on the need for additional housing units in Monroe County.
Spoonmore cited some numbers released by Regional Opportunity Initiatives at a recent housing summit, in French Lick, which sounded like an update to a 2019 report. The update does not yet appear to have been released to the general public.
But Spoonmore cited new numbers which indicate a shortage of over 7,000 units of housing. Spoonmore said, “This extreme shortage of housing affects our workers that want to live in Monroe County but can’t afford to. It affects our employers who want to grow their workforce and operations, but their employees can’t find a place to live.”
Housing: Iversen
In his answer to a question about his approach to ensuring an economically thriving Monroe County, Iversen pointed to the need to address the same 7,000-unit housing shortage that Spoonmore had cited.
A more specific question from moderator John Fernandez addressed housing specifically: “Do you believe we need more housing? If not, why not? If so, where should it go?”
Iversen replied: “One-hundred percent, we need more housing. We are in a housing crisis. Our stock of housing is not sufficient for this community. Full stop.”
In other remarks, Iversen said his campaign had already reached a lot of voters across Monroe County, and had heard that “our local economy is not working for everyone.” There are companies that want to bring their well-paid jobs to Monroe County, Iversen said, but they’re asking questions like: Where can our workforce live?
To respond to companies who might want to locate in Monroe County, Iversen said, “We don’t have the workforce housing to show them.” Iversen pointed to one major employer in Monroe County, Cook Medical, that is helping to build housing in Owen County, not Monroe County, due to what Iversen called “unforced errors by current county leadership.”
Among the “unforced errors” mentioned by Iversen were three recent situations where county commissioners could have approved a rezone request, but did not. Asked after the forum by The B Square for the specifics off those cases, among those “missed opportunities,” Iversen counted The Trails, a 125-home neighborhood, which was denied a rezone petition in September 2021.
A second missed opportunity was Southern Meadows, a 190-home workforce housing neighborhood for which a requested rezone was denied by commissioners in June 2021.
A third missed opportunity, according to Iversen, was Clear Creek Urban, which was a proposal for a neighborhood cluster that included 31 new units of housing, which was rejected by the county commissioners, in May 2021.
During Thursday’s forum Iversen was critical of one part of the still-in-the-works county development ordinance (CDO). The CDO is analogous to Bloomington’s unified development ordinance, but applies just to land in the unincorporated portion of Monroe County.
Iversen was critical of the proposed CDO, saying it is headed in the wrong direction. He agreed with the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation’s (BEDC’s) position on the proposed CDO, which says, “Monroe County residential-zoned land is slated to decrease under the CDO by over 9,300 acres.”
The BEDC’s position continues, “Some of the proposed reduction is due to areas of the county which are in a floodplain. Most of the other reduction is changing ‘residential’ zoned land to ‘agricultural/rural residential,’ which still allows for housing.” The BEDC’s position says that the change “may challenge our community’s efforts to provide more affordable housing, at a time in which housing is challenging for workers and employers alike.”
Housing: Thomas
As moderator, John Fernandez picked up on the issue of the CDO’s provisions for residential zoning and asked about the “downzoning” of the 9,000 acres from residential to rural.
By way of background, an example of a swath of territory which zoning category is affected by the CDO is just north of Bloomington’s city limits. It is currently zoned RE1— that’s short for “Estate Residential 1.”
Under the proposed CDO map, the RE1 would change to AG2.5, which is obviously short for “agricultural” but not quite so obviously an abbreviation for “residential.” Still, the long name for AG2.5 is “agricultural residential 2.5.” The 2.5 refers to the minimum lot size of 2.5 acres.
Thomas told Fernandez she was glad to have the chance to “debunk the myth” that there was a loss of 9,000 acres of residential-zoned land as a part of the proposed CDO. She pointed out that an allowable use under the proposed zoning is residential, even though its general zoning category changed to rural.
Thomas agreed that, “Yes, we need housing.” She said commissioners had supported some housing projects, including one just to the west of Bloomington. In January 2021, commissioners approved a rezone for 38 acres of former farmland so that 330 new apartments could be built there.
Thomas pointed to environmental conditions in Monroe County as challenging to any kind of development—naming floodways and karst features as specific examples. Karst features are geological formations characterized by soluble rock formations like limestone, which are associated with sinkholes, caves, and underground drainage systems.
Thomas described how it should be possible to take a 20-acre parcel with 10 acres that is historic, old-growth forest and the other half a meadow. “Can’t we take the half of the lot that is a meadow or field and put in some incredibly dense housing, tiny homes, small homes,…but keep that forest and land?”
Thomas said, “It doesn’t all have to look like track subdivisions from the 1960s. I know we can do better than that.”
Housing: Environment (human impact)
Besides the existing environmental conditions that might pose challenges to development (like karst features), environmental impact arose as a topic at Thursday’s forum in the context of potential damage that development might cause to the environment.
The issue arose in connection with HB 1108, which has passed the state house and is now being heard by a senate committee. Under the proposed bill, local governments could not pass laws that prevent development on slopes of less than 25 percent, just because of the slope.
That would have an impact on Monroe County’s zoning code, which currently prohibits development on slopes greater than 15 percent.
In support of the county’s current code, Thomas pointed to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s (IDEM’s) stormwater quality manual. “IDEM says in their own manual, you cannot build and should not build on anything greater than 15-percent slope.”
The manual says, “[D]eveloping on slopes with a grade of 15 percent or greater should be avoided whenever feasible in order to minimize erosion, soil loss, degradation of surface water, and excessive storm water runoff. Furthermore, slopes with a grade of 25 percent or more should be avoided altogether.”
Thomas pointed to the negative impact of erosion as reason to maintain the prohibition against development on slopes greater than 15 percent.
Thomas said that there could be situations where development might be possible on a slope greater than 15 percent—but that could be handled through granting a variance through the county’s board of zoning appeals.
Iversen said that in connection with steep slope development there was an effort to try to set up a dichotomy: Do you want more housing in this community, or do you want to protect the environment? Iversen said, “That’s a false choice folks—we can do both.”
Iversen said, “We can have the smart people in this room, be able to do the work to build the houses that our public is asking for, and at the same time not pollute our streams and rivers.”
The primary election takes place on May 7. Early in-person voting starts on April 9. The last day to register to vote in the primary election is April 8.
The current Commissioners don’t seem to view anything as having an immediate need. They have dragged their feet on the jail and offered excuses for the lack of affordable housing.
Any information on when the new ROI report will be released? It’s rather convenient that all the participants of The Growth Machine seem to have access and are able to put their collective thumb on the scale to stoke the “housing shortage” argument without any qualifiers or challenges.
By all means, let’s build more housing, but let’s do it right. That is:
1 Not in known floodplains according to updated maps
2 Not in areas that will have a negative impact on the quality of our of community’s drinking water, which a finite resource
3 Not in places that do not have the necessary infrastructure in place: roads that can handle the increased car and bus traffic, sidewalks, and safer off-road bicycle paths
Everyone should be able to agree on these baseline values to build a better community.
Thomas: “I can’t say where, but I can say right now that the sheriff’s department and board of commissioners…agree on an idea of what we think is the best location for a facility is.”
grrr. what a bunch of autocratic bs. she’s reminding us that they disbanded the CJRC because half the membership used every meeting as an opportunity to ask this specific question, which she is still dodging. the insular geriatric cabal said that merely asking the question was a form of harrassment and they didn’t need to put up with it. infuriating garbage approach to leadership.
my god, and then she went on to lie about her position on housing. she opposes density. full stop. she doesn’t support responsible density which preserves surrounding nature. the county’s urbanizing area plan (which is awesome!) specifically called for that sort of density, and developers came with proposals exactly in line with that plan, and she shot them down. and for nothing, for no reason.
maybe she shot them down because Margaret Clements hates everyone under the age of 60, and hates everyone who isn’t wealthy too. hey does anyone remember voting for Clements?? let’s be clear: a vote for Thomas is a vote for Clements.
Thomas is such a slimeball. i’m not only disagreeing with her policies, i’m explicitly saying: she is of poor moral character. there’s no high road when dealing with someone like this. she’s been in county government for so long that she thinks of it as hers. but it isn’t. it is ours.
My god a 2.5 acre lot size minimum is ridiculous. That’s not sustainable. We need density ASAP.
Thomas is a NIMBY to the core and Iversen would be a huge upgrade.
Volan over Githens as well, please.
The current county triumvirate is a regressive mess.