Bloomington city councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith

Dave Rollo, Bloomington city council member. (Oct. 4, 2023)

2021 Bloomington city council parliamentarian Matt Flaherty (file photo)

Kate Rosenbarger (Dec. 13, 2023)

Shruti Rana, Bloomington city councilmember-elect for District 3 (Nov. 11, 2023 NOW conference)

Andy Ruff (2019)

Hopi Stosberg (March 21, 2023)

Sydney Zulich addresses the Bloomington city council. (June 14, 2023)

Isak Asare (June 30, 2023 Democratic Party caucus)

The outgoing edition of the Bloomington city council officially wraps up its service at noon on New Year’s Day.

Returning to be sworn in at that same time are just four of the nine: Isabel Piedmont-Smith (District 1), Kate Rosenbarger (District 2), Dave Rollo (District 4) and Matt Flaherty (at large).

Joining those four will be these five: Hopi Stosberg (District 3), Shruti Rana (District 5), Sydney Zulich (District 6), Andy Ruff (at large), and Isak Asare (at large). [Photos of the nine incoming councilmembers are included in the above gallery.]

Five out of nine different faces might normally mean that the group would be short on experience at the job of city councilmember—compared to previous editions of the city council.

But it turns out that the group of nine that is to be sworn in to start 2024 has four more total years of council experience than the nine who were sworn in four years ago, to start 2020.

And the fact that the incoming city council features the youngest councilmember ever might suggest that this edition of the council would qualify as the youngest ever on some groupwise metric.

But it turns out that the city council that was sworn in 20 years ago, to start 2004, was on average younger than the incoming council. And the city council that was sworn in to start 2000 showed a bigger gap between the youngest and oldest member of the council. Continue reading “Analysis: Age-related facts about Bloomington’s next city council that nobody knew they wanted to know” →