March 10, 2025: Union labor, new jail construction, Bloomington financial data

A note about the relaunch status

I am trying to maintain a balance between publishing at least some news reports, and addressing the myriad tasks connected to the relaunch of The B Square. Adding more coverage is not like flipping a switch.

In three weeks, I hope some of the rougher edges will be smoothed out.

In the meantime, check out one of the tactics the new, improved B Square will use, to get basic information to Bloomington residents as quickly as possible: Civic Ticker. Sometimes those items be prompted by a news release. If they are, you'll see a link to the original release, so that you can judge whether there was any value added by The B Square. Other times, a Civic Ticker item will deliver the basic outcome of a vote at a public meeting, with some pre-written background.

To see the contrast between a Civic Ticker version of a meeting report and a more comprehensive report based on the same meeting, compare and contrast:

Civic Ticker section, published during the meeting: Bloomington council OKs $46.8M bond issuance to help fund $70M convention center project

Local Government section, published three days later: Meeting talk: How has union labor’s role been factored into construction of Bloomington Convention Center expansion?

One question I've heard a lot so far: Will there be a way to donate money to The B Square? Yes. That's in the works, and as soon as it's ready, it will be announced. By the start of April, I hope it will be sorted out.

If you ever find yourself looking for an old edition of the Almost Daily Bulletin, and you don't want to rummage through your email inbox, they all get posted to the website, too, in their own section.

Weather

Based on the National Weather Service forecast here's some advice.

Monday: You'll probably need at least a decent jacket or a sweater to start the day, because because the temperature will be climbing from an overnight low of 36°F. But by mid-morning, it will be well on its way to the predicted high of 66°F. No need for an umbrella, probably through Thursday.

Tuesday: You might could leave an outer wrap at home today, but for most people, it probably won't be warm enough to wear sandals without socks. The overnight low from Monday will be 45°F and will climb quickly to a high of 69°F.

By Friday, we could see weather warm enough even to wear sandals and skip the socks, with a forecasted high of 77°F. (It's always a legitimate fashion choice to wear socks with sandals or not—please do not analyze that advice as redundant.)

Roundup of recent articles

• Meeting talk: How has union labor’s role been factored into construction of Bloomington Convention Center expansion? Bloomington’s city council approved the issuance of $46.8 million in bonds for the convention center expansion. A call for postponement from a labor advocate was based on the lack of a project labor agreement (PLA) for the expansion. Instead of a PLA, pre-qualification criteria favoring union contractors were adopted.

On the calendar

The big calendar has seen some improvement since the end of last year. It's still a big pile of events, but there are some filters for different categories. I have not yet classified all the syndicated feeds correctly. The biggest improvement is that all those events will now now load lickety split in your browser.

Sheriff's deputy pay, new jail, personnel freeze: Appearing on the agenda for the Tuesday, March 10 Monroe County council meeting, which starts at 5 p.m. are at least three significant items. One is a proposal from Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté to increase the compensation for deputies. To cover the increase for the rest of 2025, the county will need to put $8,813 per deputy into the proposal, which totals $378,959. This proposal was first put forward last year. For B Square background, see: Votes ahead: Pay increases for city council, county sheriff’s deputies, one-time bump for core city union

A second significant item for the county council on Tuesday will be a discussion about the pre-design phase of the jail and justice center, which just concluded. For B Square background, see: New Monroe County jail design moves ahead, with persisting concerns about size, cost. An issue expected to be raised on Tuesday in connection with the jail project is the use of union labor. For B Square background on that, see: Meeting talk: How has union labor’s role been factored into construction of Bloomington Convention Center expansion?

Another push for duplexes in Bloomington: On the agenda for the Wednesday, March 12 city council meeting is a resolution that would direct the plan commission to prepare and recommend amendments to the unified development ordinance (UDO) that would cover several topics that have proven controversial over the last half dozen years.

One amendment is supposed to allow duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes as permitted uses in R1, R2, R3, and R4 zoning districts. Another UDO amendment is supposed to remove use-specific design standards for duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in all zones. The plan commission is also supposed to prepare and recommend a UDO amendment to remove owner-occupancy requirements for accessory dwelling units. The plan commission has 90 days to deliver the amendments to the city council for consideration.

It's possible that councilmembers who have previously opposed allowing duplexes in all residential districts will vote against giving direction to the plan commission to prepare the amendments. But they might also leave that deliberation until they see what the plan commission puts in front of them.

March 28-29: The World of Music and AI: AlgoRhythms. What does it mean to be a musical artist or composer in the era of AI? How is generative AI changing the world of music? Who, if anyone, will own AI generated music? IU Maurer School of Law and the Jacobs School of Music, is hosting this conference on the copyrightability of AI-generated music, and musical performances that use AI.

To give you an idea of what AI-generated music sounds like, give a listen to this video below. I wrote the lyrics and turned an AI robot loose with the words and a prompt that was something like "ballad female." The robot delivered the music and the vocals that you hear in the video. (The video does end abruptly—that's not a glitch in your system.)

March 26 (Wednesday): Nobel Peace Prize. This is a couple weeks out. Starting at 7 p.m. at First United Church (2420 E. 3rd St.), Ira Helfand will be speaking on the topic of preventing nuclear war. Helfand is a member of the international steering group for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). ICAN was the winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

April 24 (Thursday): Sierra Hull at The Bluebird. This is over a month away, but I think tickets for Sierra Hull's show at The Bluebird on North Walnut in downtown Bloomington are going to sell out. You will be so mad you missed the show. Hull's fingers flutter across her mandolin strings like a hummingbird's wings, and she sings like nightingale. Hull's new album just dropped: Tiptoe High Wire.

Reporting in the works

City financial data, council fiscal committee. Bloomington's online financial system is usually one of city government's bright spots for transparency. But until last week, it had not yet been updated for any 2025 numbers. The last update before then was made in late October 2024. The updates had typically been done roughly every two weeks.

Now that the information has been updated, I have downloaded four .csv files, which contain all the payroll, checkbook, expenditure budget, and revenue budget numbers from 2016 up to now. Those files are now available on BloomDocs.org. As the most recently uploaded items, the financial data files will sit on the top of the list in BloomDocs.org for at least a little while. If you search on ".csv" they should pop right up.

It's possible that the Bloomington city council's new fiscal committee will have a look at that data and start making a routine of tracking it. Members of the fiscal committee are Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Isak Asare, Dave Rollo, and Hopi Stosberg. The first meeting of the fiscal committee is set for Tuesday, March 11 at noon.

Meet Zeus, king of the dogs!

Zeus is a very, very good boy, described by his foster dad like this:

Zeus needs a quiet home, and a large dog crate to which he can retire when he wants some time on his own. A place with young children and lots of coming/going would probably not work for him. His best situation would be with someone who is around a lot, perhaps retired or who works from home, so he can be near you. This guy is a very low maintenance boy. No bad habits. 100% housetrained. Doesn’t jump up. Doesn’t bark. Likes my cats. Doesn’t pull on his lead on walks. Barely sheds at all. If I’m not around for a while, he just goes in his crate and sleeps.

Photo Finish (from B There)

For more items like these, see the B There section of the B Square website. If you would like to consider occasionally contributing to The B Square brief factual observations about the world outside your own head, as you go about your normal business in this place we call home, let me know. (Photos are optional for B There.) If you're looking at this bulletin in your email inbox, you should be able to reach me by hitting Reply.

Thanks for reading. I hope your week is off to a great start!

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