Tag: mayor

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

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” →

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” →

3 Bloomington mayoral hopefuls speak at first forum

Appearing in the same room at the same time on Tuesday were all three Bloomington mayoral candidates in the May 2 primary race for the Democratic Party’s nomination: Don Griffin, Susan Sandberg, and Kerry Thomson 

The room was Aver’s Public House on South College Mall Road. The occasion was a regular meeting of the Monroe County Democrats’ Club. Each candidate delivered a stump speech. After that, they fielded a few questions as a group.

Also given time to speak was the sole candidate for city clerk, incumbent Nicole Bolden, as well as the two candidates for the District 2 city council seat, Kate Rosenbarger and Sue Sgambelluri, who both currently serve on the city council. The outcome of the redistricting process put the two in the same district.

This report from the Feb. 21 event is confined to the remarks and the Q&A for the mayoral candidates. Continue reading “3 Bloomington mayoral hopefuls speak at first forum” →

Bloomington mayor announces extras for fire, police like $100K housing loan with annual report: violent crime up, property crime down, fire response slower

The fire pole from the former fire station on Rogers Street, which is now home to Lotus Education & Arts Foundation, is housed at the Monroe County History Center.
From left: deputy mayor Mary Catherine Carmichael, police chief Mike Diekhoff, deputy police chief Scott Oldham, and fire chiefJason Moore
Bloomington police chief Mike Diekhoff.
Bloomington fire chief Jason Moore
Former deputy mayor Don Griffin and Bloomington public engagement director Kaisa Goodman.
Mayor John Hamilton addresses the audience on the occasion of the Feb. 9, 2023 annual public safety report.
Community and family resources department director Beverly Calender-Anderson
Monroe County councilor Jennifer Crossley
Bar chart by month of calls involving weapons.
Bloomington fire department response times.

At last Thursday’s unveiling of the city’s annual public safety report for 2022, Bloomington mayor John Hamilton took the occasion to announce a few new incentives that are meant to help recruit and retain firefighters and police officers.

Among those incentives is a $100,000 no-interest housing down payment loan that is completely forgivable at the rate of $10,000 a year for up to 10 police officers and 10 firefighters—if they buy a house inside the city limits.

The recruitment challenge can be seen in the current staffing levels.

At Thursday’s event, Bloomington police chief Mike Diekhoff announced the hire of five new officers, who will start at the end of February. That puts the department’s staffing level at 88 sworn officers, which is still 17 short of the budgeted number of 105.

Even though vacancies among Bloomington’s firefighters have in the last few years not been as many as among sworn police, on Thursday Hamilton noted that there are currently 9 vacancies among the 99 firefighter positions. Continue reading “Bloomington mayor announces extras for fire, police like $100K housing loan with annual report: violent crime up, property crime down, fire response slower” →

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” →

Bloomington city council 2023 election notebook: Seeds get planted in Democratic Party primary field

Wednesday, Jan. 4 next year is the first chance for Bloomington residents to submit a formal filing of their candidacy for a seat on the nine-member city council.

The image links to a dynamic version of the new Bloomington city council district map, which allows zooming in and out.

But it’s already possible for someone to file the paperwork to establish a campaign committee or just to say that they are running.

Falling into one of those categories, are at least five candidates whose formal paperwork can be expected to show up on the Monroe County’s website sometime starting Jan. 4.

They include: incumbents Isabel Piedmont-Smith (District 1) and Dave Rollo (District 4); and potential new faces on the council, Conner Wright (District 3), Shruti Rana (District 5), and Jonas Schrodt (at large).

All nine city council seats are up for election in 2023—six representing a geographic district and three representing residents citywide. City council members serve four-year terms.

The council is currently composed of all Democrats, and the candidates described in this article will be running in the Democratic Party’s primary.

Andrew Guenther, who had previously announced an at-large city council candidacy, unaffiliated with any party, has since withdrawn that bid. Continue reading “Bloomington city council 2023 election notebook: Seeds get planted in Democratic Party primary field” →

Bloomington nixes zoning request for new jail, puts off purchase of Showers building as police HQ

The purchase of the western part of the Showers building, which also houses city hall, won’t be decided by Bloomington’s city council until next year.

But in a separate action on Wednesday night, the council did effectively decide that the site of a new Monroe County jail will not be the county government’s first choice, which was an 87-acre piece of land in the southwestern corner of Bloomington.

On a 7–2 vote on Wednesday night, the city council postponed consideration of the $8.75-million Showers building purchase, which would be made by the Bloomington redevelopment commission, if the council approves the deal. Dissenting on the postponement were Matt Flaherty and Jim Sims.

On Jan. 18, 2023, the council will again take up the question of buying the western part of the Showers building, to serve as the city’s main police station, and fire department’s administrative headquarters.

It was on a 0–9 vote, taken just a few minutes before midnight on Wednesday, that the council denied the county government’s rezone request for the 87-acre parcel in the southwestern corner of the city so that a new jail could be constructed there. Continue reading “Bloomington nixes zoning request for new jail, puts off purchase of Showers building as police HQ” →

Don Griffin kicks off campaign for mayor with catchphrase: “Believe in Bloomington”

Griffin Realty offices looking south on College Avenue.
Don Griffin addresses the crowed at Griffin Realty offices.
Don Griffin.
Jim Sims.
From left: Don Griffin, Joe Bergin, and Ruben Marté.
From left: Kaisa Goodman and Don Griffin.
Kate Rosenbarger.
Don Griffin.

On Thursday evening at the Griffin Realty offices on College Avenue, Don Griffin kicked off his campaign for mayor of Bloomington with a gathering of around 50 people.

Griffin is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination, in what will be at least a three-way field, that includes Susan Sandberg and Kerry Thomson.   The catchphrase of Griffin’s campaign will be: “Believe in Bloomington.”

In his remarks to the group, Griffin alluded to the fact that he is stepping down as deputy mayor to focus on his campaign. On Thursday, Griffin said, “My time as deputy mayor has provided me with a masterclass in city government and helped me understand what it means to serve in a more meaningful way than I could ever have imagined.”

He added, “And I want to thank John Hamilton for that opportunity.”

On Thursday night, Griffin led off the presentation of his platform by saying he wants Bloomington to be considered “the best small town in the United States.”

The four elements of Griffin’s platform are: sustainability; diversity, equity, and inclusion; housing; and job creation and attraction. Continue reading “Don Griffin kicks off campaign for mayor with catchphrase: “Believe in Bloomington”” →