Monroe Convention Center expansion

At last Tuesday’s meeting of the Monroe County Democrats Club, four candidates for the three at-large county council seats got a chance to make statements and field questions from the audience.

Appearing in front of the club were Matt Caldie, Trent Deckard, David Henry and Cheryl Munson.

Deckard and Munson are incumbents. The third incumbent, Geoff McKim, is not seeking reelection, but attended Tuesday’s lunch.

The spot represented by McKim will need to be filled by a new face. That cleared the way for challengers Henry and Caldie to run in a field where there were not three incumbents for the three available seats.

Among those four, it will be the top three vote-getters who win the Democratic Party’s nominations for county council. The seven-member county council is the fiscal body for the county government.

It’s just the three at-large seats that are up for election this year. The district seats are elected on a different cycle. The four district seats are represented by: Peter Iversen (District 1); Kate Wiltz (District2); Marty Hawk (District 3); and Jennifer Crossley (District 4).

No Republicans have declared a candidacy for county council. That means the general election race could be uncontested, if no independent candidate collects enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Tuesday’s candidate forum for the Democrats took place over lunch at DeAngelo’s in Eastland Plaza.

Continue reading “4 Dems competing for 3 county council at-large seats, give stump speeches over lunch” →

Column: Staring into the civic sun in 2024, the year of a solar eclipse — This image was generated by Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator (powered by DALL·E 3).

In 2024, the local civic cosmos could see some big changes, in the same year when a rare literal cosmic event will unfold.

On April 8, a solar eclipse will briefly cast a shadow directly over the Bloomington area, turning daylight into gloam. (Yes, that is an awfully fancy word for “twilight,” but it’s the kind of highfalutin fare that is customary for a newspaper year-in-preview column.)

During an eclipse, in the battle between dark and light across the visible disk of the sun, the dark begins with a steady assimilation of the light’s territory, but the light always reverses the trend and prevails in the end.

That’s either a great or a lousy metaphor for municipal annexation, depending on a person’s political perspective.

In fall of 2021, Bloomington’s city council approved the annexation of seven different territories, all of which are still the subject of litigation.

Metaphors aside, 2024 holds the potential for some court decisions on those pending annexations, which might settle the question of how much Bloomington’s boundaries will change.

Of course, annexation is just one of myriad civic issues that are in the queue for Bloomington and Monroe County in 2024.

Here’s a non-exhaustive rundown of topics The B Square will try to track in the coming year. Continue reading “Column: Staring into the civic sun in 2024, the year of a solar eclipse” →