Tag: clerk

Monroe County pay raises: Final discussions appear mostly done, but not for elected official salaries

About four hours into a meeting last Tuesday, Monroe County council president Kate Wiltz was looking to wrap up a topic that was leftover from discussions of the 2024 budget—pay increases for elected officials.

The elected positions under discussion are: auditor, assessor, clerk, coroner, commissioners, county councilors, recorder, surveyor, and treasurer.

Wiltz announced, “I would entertain a motion on what we should do with elected officials and their chief deputies, with respect to 2024.”

In the Nat U. Hill room of the Monroe County courthouse, where the county council meets, Wiltz’s invitation was met with about 20 seconds of silence.

“All right. Wow. We have to do something,” Wiltz said.

But on Tuesday, the council left open the question of pay increases for elected officials in 2024. The topic of pay for elected officials will be taken up on the night of the county’s budget hearing, which is set for  Oct. 3 at 5:30 p.m.

If the county council decides to treat elected officials like all other employees, they’ll get an 8.5-percent raise.

Even though the county council did not reach a consensus on pay increases for electeds, they did settle on an approach for some other employee categories that, until Tuesday, had been open questions. Continue reading “Monroe County pay raises: Final discussions appear mostly done, but not for elected official salaries” →

Bloomington primary election 2023 photos: A look back to the distant past of one week ago

Wildlife was not allowed to vote at Bloomington High School South—there’s no election-deering allowed within 50 feet of the polls. (May 2, 2023)
Don Griffin (May 2, 2023)
Kerry Thomson (May 2, 2023)
Don Griffin (May 2, 2023)
Kerry Thomson (May 2, 2023)

For the B Square’s day-of election coverage last Tuesday, words and numbers took priority over photographs.

But a complete record surely demands some photos, even if they’re late.

In that spirit, below is a set of photographs, in mostly chronological order, as they were taken during the day—at different polling places and then at the Cascades Inn where the local Democrats gathered to celebrate their victories. Continue reading “Bloomington primary election 2023 photos: A look back to the distant past of one week ago” →

2023 Bloomington Democratic Party primary results: Thomson wins mayoral nomination, 5 of 9 councilmembers won’t return in 2024

On Tuesday, Kerry Thomson won a clear 10-point victory over second-place finisher Susan Sandberg in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for mayor of Bloomington.

[.pdf file of 2023 unofficial primary election results]

Thomson did not get a majority of the 8,012 votes in the three-way race.

Thomson’s 3,444 votes gave her about 43 percent of the vote, compared to 33 percent (2,644) for Susan Sandberg and 24 percent (1,924) for Don Griffin.

No Republican has yet declared a candidacy for mayor and no independent candidate has submitted the required 352 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. To appear on the ballot as an independent candidate for mayor or city council, qualifying signatures  have to be submitted by June 30.

So it’s likely that Thomson will be the next mayor of Bloomington. Incumbent mayor John Hamilton did not seek re-election. Continue reading “2023 Bloomington Democratic Party primary results: Thomson wins mayoral nomination, 5 of 9 councilmembers won’t return in 2024” →

Alea iacta est: May 2, 2023 primary election results, served when ready

Primary Election Day polls for May 2, 2023 have now closed in Monroe County.

The cutoff time was 6 p.m., which made for a 12-hour voting day. But anyone in line by 6 p.m. has to be allowed to cast a ballot.

Bloomington voters are electing party nominees for mayor, clerk, and nine city council seats. Ellettsville voters are electing party nominees for clerk/treasurer and town council.

Preliminary results from Bloomington and Ellettsville precincts will be published as updates to this article as they are available.

Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne wrote in her 5 p.m. emailed message: “Please do not anticipate any results before 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m.”

Voters who joined the line just before the closing of the polls are just one reason that results can’t be reported immediately at 6 p.m..

Geography also plays a role. There’s some physical distance that has to be covered, when teams from Primary Election Day polling locations across Bloomington and Ellettsville pack up their ballots, the memory devices from the ballot scanners, and other election documentation, and turn in the whole package to Election Central. Continue reading “Alea iacta est: May 2, 2023 primary election results, served when ready” →

City Primary Election Day for Bloomington, Ellettsville: Polls are OPEN

Election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets (May 2, 2023).
Election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets (May 2, 2023).
Before polls opened, inside the election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets (May 2, 2023).

“The polls are open and all is well.”

That was the opening line from an email sent by Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne at 6:09 a.m today, Tuesday, May 2.

Bloomington voters are electing party nominees for mayor, clerk, and nine city council seats. Ellettsville voters are electing party nominees for clerk/treasurer and town council.

At 6 a.m. the election inspector for the voting location that’s set up at the elections operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets opened the door and announced the opening of the polls, as required by state election law.

No one was standing in line to vote at 6 a.m. sharp. The first voter arrived at 6:11 a.m., and asked, “Where is everybody?” before disappearing inside to cast his ballot. Four minutes later, he reappeared then drove away.

The election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets, which is the former NAPA auto parts store, is the voting location for seven precincts: B-03, B-07, B-22, P-06, P-08, P-15, and P-31.

Indiana’s secretary of state has set up a voter portal where you can check your polling site for primary Election Day, which is May 2.

The B Square will update this article with vignettes from different polling locations throughout the day. Continue reading “City Primary Election Day for Bloomington, Ellettsville: Polls are OPEN” →

Early voting for May 2, 2023 municipal primary starts, traditions observed

Early voting at Monroe County election operations at 4th and Walnut Streets. (April 4, 2023)
Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne’s “I Voted!” sticker.
Early voting at Monroe County election operations at 4th and Walnut Streets. (April 4, 2023)

On Tuesday morning at 8 o’clock sharp, Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne opened the door to the election operations center at 4th and Walnut streets and called out: “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now open!”

That’s how in-person early voting kicked off this year for the May 2 primary elections in Monroe County.

Bloomington voters will be electing party nominees for mayor, clerk, and nine city council seats. Ellettsville voters will elect party nominees for clerk/treasurer and town council. Continue reading “Early voting for May 2, 2023 municipal primary starts, traditions observed” →

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.

Chatbot icon with text: As an AI language model, I cannot seek elected office in the city of Bloomington, Indiana.

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” →

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.
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” →

2023 Elections | Day One notebook: 9 file paperwork, including 3 known mayoral candidates

Wednesday was the first day it was possible to file the forms to declare an official candidacy for municipal elections in Indiana’s 2023 election cycle.

In Monroe County, nine candidates got that paperwork task out of the way on Day One.

Filing their CAN-42 forms on Wednesday, in order of filing, were: Kerry Thomson (Bloomington mayor); Susan Sandberg (Bloomington mayor); Sue Sgambelluri (Bloomington city council District 2); Don Griffin (Bloomington mayor); Ron Smith (Bloomington city council District 3); William Ellis (Ellettsville town council Ward 2); Jonas Schrodt (Bloomington city council at large); Brett Heinisch (Bloomington city council, District 3); and Nicole Bolden (Bloomington city clerk).

Ellis and Heinisch filed to run in the Republican Party’s primary. The others filed to run in the Democratic Party’s primary. Continue reading “2023 Elections | Day One notebook: 9 file paperwork, including 3 known mayoral candidates” →

Column: Looking ahead to local government news in 2023 like a goose landing on a half frozen pond

A week ago, up at Miller-Showers Park, a flock of Canada geese banked overhead and came in for a landing on the southernmost stormwater detention pond.

The surface was half frozen, because a couple days before the temperature had dropped to –8 F.

As elegant as geese appear in flight formation, on landing they do not make a picture of grace. They sort of wobble along the final approach, webbed feet akimbo, before mostly crashing into the water.

But they were, of course, unscathed. They started cruising around, dabbling for whatever aquatic plants were under the surface.

That’s somewhat like how local government works: It’s elegant and smooth in theory, but when it lands on some particular topic near you, it might look a little clumsy. You might get splashed.

Where will Bloomington’s area local government land in 2023? Here’s a roundup of spots that is surely not exhaustive. Continue reading “Column: Looking ahead to local government news in 2023 like a goose landing on a half frozen pond” →