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Almost Daily Bulletin

April 3, 2025: Storm, school board, vote centers, big tech

Relaunch update

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Weather

Based on the National Weather Service forecast in text and charts here's some advice:

Thursday: Wear just a light jacket to start the day and bring along some rain gear, even if you don't need it until early afternoon. The 58°F overnight low from Wednesday night will yield a high of 66°F. Starting around 2 p.m. there's a 30-50% chance of rain, and by 9 p.m. there's a better than 80% chance that it's going to rain.

Friday: Wear galoshes on your feet, a brimmed hat on your head, and take an umbrella. You might need a slightly warmer jacket than Friday. There's a 60-70% chance of rain to start the day and that increases to 80-100% by around 2 p.m. The temperatures will be a little cooler than Thursday, starting around 51°F and hitting a high of 62°F.

Sign up for weather alerts: Monroe County emergency alert system.

Roundup of recent articles

On the calendar

To Make Big Tech Less Harmful, Make it Less Important: On Friday (April 4) at noon at the Hamilton Lugar School on Indiana University campus, Cory Doctorow will be speaking on the topic of how to make companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook (Meta), and Apple less harmful. From the HLS event description: "World governments spent the past 20 years passing laws designed to make giant tech companies behave themselves. This was a catastrophic failure. But the most consequential factor in the harms from Big Tech isn’t how bad the companies are—it’s how inescapable they are. Policies that make Big Tech unimportant—policies that make it easy to leave Big Tech, and that eliminate tech’s role as gatekeeper—will hit Big Tech right where it hurts, square in the dongle, making tech less powerful, more biddable, and, most importantly, less relevant." Cory Doctorow is a big deal and a very entertaining speaker.

Vote centers: Monroe County's vote center study committee meeting on Wednesday was a casualty of the storm—it was cancelled. On Thursday (April 3) at 1:30 p.m., the county election board will hold its regular monthly meeting. The election board will almost certainly give a little bit of air time to the topic of vote centers. A public hearing about vote centers which is set for Monday next week (April 7) at 5 p.m. Vote centers are different from the kind of precinct-based polling locations that are currently used by Monroe County. At a precinct-based polling site, only voters from specified precincts can cast a ballot there. Vote centers are polling places where a voter who is registered in any precinct can cast a ballot. For recent B Square coverage, see: Vote center plan for Monroe County to get public hearing, no longer appears dead

Artists for Climate Awareness: Distant Thunder. Starting at 11 a.m. on Thursday (April 3) is an exhibit at the Arts Alliance Center, 2894 East 3rd Street. The exhibition goes from April 3 through April 28. The juried exhibition is part of Earth Month celebrations.

10th Street from Morton Street to Indiana Avenue: The transportation planners at the city of Bloomington want to know what you think about the stretch of 10th Street between Morton Street (close to city hall) and Indiana Avenue (the edge of campus). How can it be made safer? The first public engagement on the topic is a drop-in style affair from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday (April 3) right there in the corridor, at the Mr. Copy parking lot (501 E 10th St). You don't have to stay the whole hour. Just pop over, say hello, and tell them what you think.

Trashion Refashion: The 2025 Trashion Refashion Runway Show will be held on April 13, 2025 at 7 p.m. at the Buskirk Chumley Theater. Designs for this show are made from refashioned garments or unwanted materials including paper and plastic bags, pop tabs, bicycle tires, tablecloths, old clothes, and pet food containers! Here's a link: Buy tickets.

Reporting in the works

Agreement between city of Bloomington and Bloomington Transit: As Wednesday's storm approached, Bloomington's city council did not cancel its scheduled 6:30 p.m. meeting. But the council did decide to revise its agenda to consider only its legislative items that needed a vote, and even one of those dropped off the evening's docket.

The item that did not get a vote was an interlocal agreement for IT and legal services between Bloomington Transit and the city of Bloomington. A similar agreement has been approved for the last several years, just based on an executive signature, and has not been put in front of the city council. I had always assumed the lack of council approval stemmed from the fact that it doesn't deal with a situation where two governmental entities are taking some sort of joint jurisdictional approach to exercising some power, as interlocal agreements are designed under state law to do.

The agreement between BT and the city of Bloomington is just a straight up contract for services. The agreement for 2024 was simply signed by the mayor. (Note that the resolution number included with that agreement is the BT board's resolution number, not the city council's.) 

Meet Canelo!

Up for adoption, as of April 3, 2025, at the city of Bloomington's animal shelter is Canelo! Here's another link: all animals up for adoption at the shelter. (The photo is from the city's website.)

This very, very good boy is a coon hound. Here's what the shelter staff say about Canelo:

If you're looking for a very good, extra handsome boy who is social, calm and good with other pets, then stop looking now and come meet Canelo. He is an excellent playmate for other dogs, whether they are playful or chill. His favorite move is flapping his paws in the air to instigate play! This guy is all hound charm and we are here for it!

Photo Finish (from B There)
Kirkwood Avenue & Lincoln Street

Kirkwood Avenue looking west, a storm drain is at capacity. (April 2, 2025)

For more items like these, see the B There section of the B Square website.

There's more to Bloomington than the narrow slice that I traverse in my daily travels. To improve the geographic coverage of B There, please consider occasionally contributing to The B Square brief factual observations about the world outside your own head, as you go about your normal business. (Photos are optional for B There.) The mechanics of making a contribution are pretty straightforward—just let me know if you'd like to learn the ins and outs. If you're looking at this bulletin in your email inbox, you should be able to reach me by hitting Reply.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

Dave Askins
734-645-2633
dave@bsquarebulletin.com

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