2023 election notebook: First wave of absentee ballots mailed, other fun tidbits

Democratic Party primary ballot District 1

Democratic Party primary ballot District 2

Democratic Party primary ballot District 3

Republican Party primary ballot District 3

Democratic Party primary ballot District 4

Democratic Party primary ballot District 5

Democratic Party primary ballot District 6

The first live ballots are now headed into the hands of voters in Bloomington’s May 2 municipal primary election.

On Thursday and Friday, absentee ballots were sent to the 28 registered voters who have requested them so far. That’s based on the absentee voter list distributed by Monroe County election division staff.

Over the next few weeks, more absentee ballots will be sent to those who qualify, as more voters request them.

The Democratic Party’s primary will almost certainly select Bloomington’s mayor, city clerk and city council for the next four years. Just one Republican, Brett Heinisch for city council District 3, has declared a candidacy this year.

The first wave of mailed absentee ballots is one of several indicators that Bloomington’s primary elections are coming up quick. Continue reading “2023 election notebook: First wave of absentee ballots mailed, other fun tidbits” →

Another season of Kirkwood street closures, parklets OK’d by Bloomington city council

Highlighted in yellow are the sections of Kirkwood Avenue in Bloomington that will be closed off to automobile traffic for six months, from April 3, 2023, until Oct. 1, 2023.

Parklet on Kirkwood east of College Avenue (Bing aerial imagery 2022)

The west side of College Avenue from Kirkwood to 6th Street. (Bing aerial imagery 2022)

Shown is the half block closure of Kirkwood Avenue just east of Walnut Street. (Bing aerial imagery 2022.)

Grant Street looking south. The ADA entrance to Trinity Episcopal Church is on the left. The ADA accessible parking space to be added will be on the right. (Google Street view image.)

Parklet for Metal Works Brewing Brewing on 6th Street looking southwest. (2022)

This year, parts of Kirkwood Avenue in downtown Bloomington will again be closed to automobile traffic—for six months from April 3 through Oct. 1.

Again this year, residents and visitors to downtown Bloomington will also notice orange water-filled traffic barriers marking off some on-street parking spaces, so that restaurants can serve customers there.

The “parklets,” as they’re called, come this year with a “beautification” requirement, which can include construction of seating platforms, incorporation of art and other cosmetic improvements.

This year, the closed-off sections of Kirkwood are the same as in the last three years. Continue reading “Another season of Kirkwood street closures, parklets OK’d by Bloomington city council” →

Bloomington council stays motionless on question of removing traffic commissioner

As expected, there was no action by Bloomington’s city council Wednesday night on a motion that had been made four weeks ago to remove Greg Alexander from the city’s traffic commission.

Somewhat unexpected at the end of this Wednesday’s meeting was the lack of any motion that was still pending on the question of Alexander’s removal.

The previous motion, which had been made by Dave Rollo, described the cause for Alexander’s removal as “…posting obscene and inappropriate statements…” on social media.

As planned, Rollo’s Feb. 1 motion was withdrawn on Wednesday by unanimous consent of the council.

But after council deliberations on the new, revised motion that Rollo made on Wednesday, it seemed at least a little bit in doubt whether it would have enough support to pass—either that night or after a planned postponement.

So, not as planned, Rollo wound up asking for, and getting, unanimous consent to withdraw his new motion.

That left the council motionless on the question of Alexander’s removal from the traffic commission. Continue reading “Bloomington council stays motionless on question of removing traffic commissioner” →

Committee report on traffic commissioner’s removal to be put in front of Bloomington city council

Four weeks ago, Bloomington’s city council delayed a vote on the question of removing Greg Alexander from the traffic commission—by referring the matter to an already established committee on council processes.

In the meantime, that committee has met three times.

This Wednesday, the question of Alexander’s removal from the traffic commission will again be put in front of the council, but this time with a recommendation from the committee.

The original motion, made by Dave Rollo at the council’s Feb. 1 meeting, described the cause for removal as “…posting obscene and inappropriate statements…” on social media.

The committee’s recommendation is neither in favor or against Alexander’s removal.

If the full council follows the committee’s recommendation, it seems unlikely the question will get decided this Wednesday.

After weighing a recent court case, and considerations of what can count as a cause for removal, due process, and First Amendment questions, the committee’s recommendation is for the motion to be withdrawn.

But the committee’s general recommendation has left the door open for a modified motion on Alexander’s removal. The committee has made three suggestions about a new motion, if some councilmember wants to put one forward. Continue reading “Committee report on traffic commissioner’s removal to be put in front of Bloomington city council” →

Chatbot vs. Bloomington candidates for city office

With each election cycle, the League of Women Voters hosts a website with candidate profiles. It’s called Vote 411.

Included below are links to all the LWV profiles for all candidates in Bloomington’s city primary elections—for mayor, clerk, and city council.

The Vote 411 profiles include the answers that candidates have written to questions posed by LWV.

What if the same questions were posed to a chatbot that has been trained on a giant corpus of text, to respond to conversational prompts?

The B Square posed the LWV’s questions to ChatGPT, which is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by a company called OpenAI. It was released late last year. (GPT stands for Generative Pre-training Transformer.)

The LWV questions were given minor tweaks, like swapping in “Bloomington, Indiana” for “the city” to give ChatGPT a shot at providing answers that reflect the unique circumstances of Bloomington.

Another tweak: In places where the LWV questions use the second-person pronoun “you,” some kind of passive voice construction was swapped in. That’s because ChatGPT tends to respond with a disclaimer of sorts when asked about itself. For example, “As an AI language model, I have never tasted maple syrup, …”

Readers are invited to use ChatGPT as a kind of baseline, to judge the answers given by candidates. Is a given candidate’s answer better than a chatbot’s? Continue reading “Chatbot vs. Bloomington candidates for city office” →

Bloomington concedes: Simple tickets can’t be given to scooter companies for bad parking by their users

A part-time temp worker documents an improperly parked scooter at 6th & Walnut streets Oct. 11, 2022

North Walnut Street Feb. 21, 2023 (This scooter was reported to the city and moved out of the ADA ramp by The B Square.

North Walnut Street Feb. 23, 2023. These scooters were reported to the city and moved out of the sidewalk by The B Square.

In late 2021, The B Square reported that no citations had been issued to scooter companies for violating the parking regulations laid out in a local ordinance, which was approved by the city council in July 2019.

When no ordinary parking tickets were issued to scooter companies, that came as a surprise to some residents—given the number of scooters they routinely encountered blocking ADA ramps and sidewalks in the downtown area, or in their residential neighborhoods.

The lack of any citations was especially unexpected, in light of the assurance given by city attorney Mike Rouker on July 31, 2019— the night the city council enacted the scooter ordinance. Rouker said that if scooter parking became a problem, parking fines would be imposed on scooter companies whenever the city saw a parking problem.

In August 2022, The B Square raised a question to Bloomington’s corporation counsel, Beth Cate, about the enforceability of the city’s ordinance that regulates shared electric scooter parking. That email went unanswered.

But last week, six months later, Bloomington’s director of economic and sustainable development, Alex Crowley, wrote in response to an emailed question from The B Square: “[T]he language in the ordinance needs to be tightened up, to give us the flexibility to impose fines on [scooter company] without having to impound.” Continue reading “Bloomington concedes: Simple tickets can’t be given to scooter companies for bad parking by their users” →

Bloomington city council notes: New sidewalks OK’d, but Kirkwood closure, parklets delayed for 2 weeks

Not included on the map, because no locations have yet been identified, is a $50,000 allocation for resident-led traffic calming projects. The image links to a dynamic map.

Two sidewalk projects are supposed to get constructed and another two designed in 2023, based on the Bloomington city council’s approval of its sidewalk committee recommendations at Wednesday night’s meeting.

In other business, the city council postponed for two weeks its approval of what has become an annual Kirkwood Avenue closure, and “parklet” program, to expand outside dining for some downtown restaurants. Continue reading “Bloomington city council notes: New sidewalks OK’d, but Kirkwood closure, parklets delayed for 2 weeks” →

2023 Bloomington Elections | Primary field for Dems set: 3 for mayor, 5 of 6 council districts contested, 7 candidates for 3 at-large seats, 1 for clerk

Democratic Party candidate names are in blue. Republican Party candidate names are in red. The locations for dots and labels of candidate names correspond to where the candidates live.

On Jan. 4, residents were able start filing official declarations of candidacy in the 2023 Bloomington primary elections.

But at noon on Friday, the time for filing official paperwork expired.

No unexpected declarations for mayor were recorded on the last day of filing. That means voters across the city in Bloomington’s Democratic Party primary on May 2 will have three mayoral candidates to choose from: Kerry Thomson; Susan Sandberg; and Don Griffin.

And Democrats will have a pool of seven at-large city council candidates—from which to choose three.

There’s only one candidate in the Democratic primary for city clerk—incumbent Nicole Bolden.

Republican voters will have no citywide candidates to choose from.

The one independent candidate for mayor who has filed paperwork to establish a committee is Joseph Davis. But he has not yet submitted the 352 signatures that he needs, in order to be placed on the Nov. 7 general election ballot. The deadline for Davis and any other independent candidates to submit signatures is June 30.

Continue reading “2023 Bloomington Elections | Primary field for Dems set: 3 for mayor, 5 of 6 council districts contested, 7 candidates for 3 at-large seats, 1 for clerk” →

Colocation of police with city administration big theme of Bloomington council deliberations on 5-4 approval of Showers building deal

Bloomington city councilmember Susan Sandberg (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Kate Rosenbarger (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city council member Sue Sgambelluri (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Dave Rollo (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Matt Flaherty (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Steve Volan (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington police chief Mike Diekhoff (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington mayor John Hamilton (Jan. 25, 2023).

Former city councilmember David David Sabbagh speaks against the Showers building purchase (Jan. 25, 2023).

Police union president Paul Post (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington police detective Jeff Rodgers (Jan. 25, 2023).

The view is from the west of the Showers building. The pink outline shows the portion of the building that Bloomington has made an accepted offer to purchase from CFC Properties. The image is from the Pictometry module of Monroe County’s property lookup system.

On Wednesday night, Bloomington’s city council took action that will, as councilmember Dave Rollo put it, shape the city’s public safety building footprint “for decades to come.”

The council split 5–4 on a vote to approve the Bloomington redevelopment commission’s purchase agreement with CFC Properties—for the 64,000 square feet in the western portion of the former Showers Brothers furniture factory that currently houses city hall.

Asked by Rollo if he agreed that the “decades-to-come” description of the deal’s impact is accurate, Bloomington’s mayor John Hamilton confirmed that he did.

The deal negotiated by the RDC with CFC Properties carries a price tag of $8.75 million. The proposed move includes another $14.75 million to renovate and re-configure the Showers building space. Continue reading “Colocation of police with city administration big theme of Bloomington council deliberations on 5-4 approval of Showers building deal” →

Yes to purchase of west Showers building, says Bloomington city council on 5–4 vote

Bloomington city hall’s footprint inside the former Showers Brothers furniture factory building on Morton Street will expand by 64,000 square feet to include the western portion of the building, where the city’s police station and fire department administrative headquarters will be located.

That’s because at its Wednesday meeting, the city council voted 5–4 to approve an ordinance that appropriates $29.5 million in bond proceeds, which includes $8.75 million for the purchase of the western portion of the Showers building.

It’s part of Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s plan to put both the city’s main police station and fire department administration in the same historic city hall building. The proposed move is part of a bigger plan estimated at over $30-million—which includes reconstructing the flood-damaged Fire Station #1 and remodeling Fire Station #3.

Approval of the bond issuance itself had come in early December last year. Continue reading “Yes to purchase of west Showers building, says Bloomington city council on 5–4 vote” →