Possible reform of Bloomington boards, commissions gets study by city council committee

Clockwise around the table from right: City councilmembers Matt Flaherty and Isabel Piedmont-Smith; city of Bloomington public engagement director Kaisa Goodman; city council deputy attorney Ash Kulak; and city councilmember Sue Sgambelluri. On screen in the upper left of the frame is Bloomington city clerk Nicole Bolden. he meeting took place in the city council’s “library” room. (May 25, 2023)

On Thursday night, a special city council committee met to move ahead with a closer look at reforming various processes related to Bloomington’s boards and commissions.

Also up for consideration by the four-member committee are possible recommendations on merging some of the city’s roughly 50 boards and commissions.

The committee is hoping to wrap up its work on board and commission reform by the end of the year.

The committee was appointed by council president Sue Sgambelluri at the council’s first meeting of the year. It was the same meeting when she was elected by her colleagues as this year’s council president.

In addition to Matt Flaherty as chair of the committee, Sgambelluri appointed as members the three officers of the council—including herself (president), Isabel Piedmont-Smith (vice president) and Dave Rollo (parliamentarian). Rollo did not attend Thursday’s meeting. Continue reading “Possible reform of Bloomington boards, commissions gets study by city council committee” →

On 4–5 vote, city council rejects direct oversight of Bloomington traffic calming, greenways program

Bloomington’s city council meeting. (May 10, 2023)

Bloomington city council president Sue Sgambelluri. (May 10, 2023)

Tracy Bee spoke against the ordinance. (May 10, 2023)

Katie Yoder spoke against the ordinance. (May 10, 2023)

Pauly Tarricone spoke against the ordinance. (May 10, 2023)

Greg Alexander spoke against the ordinance. (May 10, 2023)

Bicycle and pedestrian coordinator Hank Duncan (May 10, 2023)

Jack Wanninger spoke against the ordinance. (May 10, 2023)

On a vote split along familiar lines, Bloomington’s city council has rejected an ordinance that would have required council approval for the installation of new traffic calming and greenway projects.

The vote came on Wednesday night just a few minutes before midnight, at a meeting that started at 6:30 p.m. The ordinance, which was sponsored by Dave Rollo failed on a 4–5 vote.

It was a familiar 4-4 split, with Sue Sgambelluri providing the deciding vote to give one side a majority.

Supporting the ordinance were Rollo, Jim Sims, Ron Smith, and Susan Sandberg. Voting against it were Sgambelluri, Matt Flaherty, Kate Rosenbarger, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, and Steve Volan.

The outcome hung in the balance until Sgambelluri weighed in. As council president and chair of the meeting, she was last to offer her view.

Continue reading “On 4–5 vote, city council rejects direct oversight of Bloomington traffic calming, greenways program” →

Bike-ped group advises against direct oversight of traffic calming projects by Bloomington city council

May 8, 2023 meeting of the bicycle and pedestrian safety commission. Clockwise from left corner of the frame: Zac Hunec, Mitch Rice, Paul Ash, Pauly Tarricone, Hank Duncan (staff), Ryan Robling (staff), Rob Danzman, Ann Edmonds, and Jaclyn Ray.

On a unanimous vote of its seven members on Monday night, Bloomington’s bicycle and pedestrian safety commission (BPSC) recommended that the city council not adopt an ordinance that would establish the council as the decision maker on traffic calming and greenway projects.

The ordinance appears on the city council’s Wednesday (May 10) meeting agenda.

The council had postponed consideration of the law at its meeting last week, specifically in order to give the BPSC a chance to weigh in on the latest version of the ordinance. Continue reading “Bike-ped group advises against direct oversight of traffic calming projects by Bloomington city council” →

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

Kerry Thomson, Bloomington mayoral nominee

Susan Sandberg, Bloomington mayoral candidate.

Don Griffin, Bloomington mayoral candidate.

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” →

2023 Bloomington primary: Black Lives Matter B-town assesses Democratic Party candidates

Early Saturday (April 15), Black Lives Matter B-town released its assessment of Democratic Party city primary candidates who responded to a survey that included 10 questions for all candidates and two questions just for mayoral or city council candidates.

Sent the questionnaire were Democratic Party primary candidates for Bloomington mayor, city clerk and city council. The questionnaire was not sent to candidates affiliated with the Republican Party, because BLM B-town does not consider the party to be in alignment with its basic principles.

According to BLM B-town, their candidate assessments are provided to voters for informational purposes—they are not endorsements.

Candidates were given seven days to fill out the questionnaire, and were sent subsequent reminders after the survey was sent, according to BLM B-town

A total of 18 candidates wrote out answers to the questionnaire. It was designed to allow assessments of candidates in the categories of: Awareness, Position, Vision, Voices at the Table, Commitment & Effectiveness, Passion & Comportment.

Candidates are assessed on a scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.

Some candidates did not respond to the questionnaire. About those candidates, BLM B-town wrote: “[C]andidates’ refusals to provide answers for this Voter’s Guide should remind us that the majority of the Bloomington political landscape is built to sustain anti-Black practices.”

BLM B-town gave candidates who did not respond to the BLM B-town questionnaire an assessment of “strongly disagree.” Continue reading “2023 Bloomington primary: Black Lives Matter B-town assesses Democratic Party candidates” →

Bloomington city council jammed up on issue of traffic commissioner’s ouster, still no vote taken

Bloomington city councilmember Dave Rollo. (April 12, 2023)

Bloomington traffic commissioner Greg Alexander (April 12, 2023)

An expected up-down vote on the question of Greg Alexander’s removal from Bloomington’s traffic commission did not take place at Wednesday night’s city council meeting.

The motion for Alexander’s removal—because of Tweets he posted late last year—had been postponed from the council’s March 29 meeting. That postponement had unanimous support from the council, in order to give Alexander at least five business days to respond in writing to the specific reasons listed out in the motion.

On Wednesday, councilmember Dave Rollo wound up withdrawing his motion to remove Alexander.

Since Jan. 18, when the council reappointed Alexander to the traffic commission, Rollo has now made three different motions on Alexander’s removal—and withdrawn each one. Continue reading “Bloomington city council jammed up on issue of traffic commissioner’s ouster, still no vote taken” →

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” →

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” →