May 26, 2025: Transportation, 2026 elections, school finance

As my recovery from eye surgery continues, I don't want to lose the habit of sending out an email every Monday and Thursday. Even though this edition of the Almost Daily Bulletin is missing most of the standard elements, I hope it still contains some information you'll find useful in the coming week.

Transportation. May 19 was set to be the inaugural meeting of the city of Bloomington's transportation commission. It's the one commission that replaced three previously existing commissions. But the May 19 meeting was canceled because by then, only two appointments had been made to the nine-member group. The remaining appointments are supposed to be made by the city's board of public works (1), the plan commission (1), the mayor (2), and city council (3).

A city council interview committee consisting of Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Courtney Daily and Andy Ruff could be taking up the issue of transportation commission appointments at its meeting on Wednesday, May 28 at 5:45 p.m. Based on the city's response to a B Square records request, the committee will have at least a dozen applicants to choose from. If the council does not make its appointments to the commission by the time of its June 4 meeting, its next chance will be on July 16, which is the first meeting following the council's "summer recess."

Elections: County races 2026. Monroe County Sheriff Rubin Marté has announced his intent to seek re-election. It's about this time in 2021 when Marté, a Democrat, first announced his candidacy for the office. So by Monroe County standards, it's not really all that early to start thinking about the 2026 campaign. But there's still plenty of time–you can't formally declare a candidacy until the beginning of 2026. There's no word yet on the Republican Party side about any specific potential candidate for sheriff.

For the District 1 county commissioner seat, currently held by Democrat Lee Jones, current county councilors Trent Deckard and David Henry, also both Democrats, are known to be eying that seat for the 2026 election cycle.

Elections: County election board. A news release from Monroe County Democratic Party chair, Samuel Ujdak, stated that former county commissioner Penny Githens would be replacing John Fernandez on the election board as the Democratic Party appointee. The appointment is considered by some party insiders to be controversial. There could be more to report on this by the time of the next election board meeting on June 5.

Elections: Municipal election cycle? This summer, Indiana's secretary of state will be studying the potential impact of a statewide requirement that counties have to use vote centers instead of precinct-based voting. The bill that requires the secretary of state to do this got frequent mention during the recent local debate over making Monroe County a vote-center county. A part of the same bill requires the secretary of state to study the impact of moving municipal elections to even-numbered years. Depending on the report produced by the secretary of state, that could set up the 2026 legislative session for a debate about when municipal elections should be held.

School finance. During public commentary at the most recent Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC) board meeting, a speaker raised the issue of administrator salaries. The figures provides by MCCSC in its presentations about the district's finances are significantly different from those reported in the Dept. of Local Government Finance (DLGF) database. The B Square is working to get a clear understanding of the discrepancy.

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

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