Tag: Nicole Bolden

New position OK’d for jail cleaning, Monroe County councilors talk making (versus keeping) the peace

Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté (March 6, 2023).
President of the Monroe County Democratic Black Caucus, Nicole Bolden (March 6, 2023).
Monroe County councilor Jennifer Crossley at the March 14, 2023 council meeting.
Monroe County councilor Kate Wiltz at the March 14, 2023 council meeting.

A new position at Monroe County’s jail has been created to support new sheriff Ruben Marté’s effort to make the jail clean and sanitary, and to keep it that way.

At their regular Tuesday meeting, county councilors voted unanimously in favor of creating a new job called “jail facility coordinator.”  It will be paid on par with guards. It will report directly to the sheriff.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the county council authorized an additional appropriation of $40,000 for supplies to clean and paint the jail. Continue reading “New position OK’d for jail cleaning, Monroe County councilors talk making (versus keeping) the peace” →

Advice on choice for new jail design-build firm to be heard by Monroe County commissioners, justice response committee still struggling

County commissioner Penny Githens (March 6, 2023).
County commissioner Julie Thomas (March 6, 2023).
County commissioner Lee Jones (March 6, 2023).
Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté (March 6, 2023).
From left: Monroe County circuit court judge Darcie Fawcett and deputy prosecutor April Wilson (March 6, 2023).
President of the Monroe County Democratic Black Caucus, Nicole Bolden (March 6, 2023).
Monroe County councilor Jennifer Crossley (March 6, 2023).
Community justice response committee (CJRC) (March 6, 2023).
Jauston Huerta, director of FOCUS Initiatives (March 6, 2023).

At their work session this Wednesday (March 8), Monroe County commissioners are supposed to receive a recommendation on which of three firms to select, to design and build a new jail.

The three firms responded to a request for proposals (RFQ) issued by the commissioners. Reviewing and scoring the three proposals was a committee of staff from the county’s legal department, the sheriff’s office, the facilities department, and the administrator for the commissioners.

The three firms making proposals were DLZ, Elevatus, and RQAW.

The timetable for selection and approval of a company was sketched out by president of the board of county commissioners, Penny Githens, at Monday’s meeting of the community justice response committee (CJRC).

Githens said the commissioners expect to vote on the selection of one of the three firms at their March 22 regular meeting. Whichever company is selected would be invited to give a presentation to the CJRC on April 3, Githens said.

The timetable for handling the responses to the RFQ could be counted as a bit of progress towards the goal of responding to the work of two consultants, released to the county government about 20 months ago. The report described Monroe County’s jail as having “far exceeded its structural and functional life cycle.”

But Monday’s CJRC meeting was again plagued by friction between the three county commissioners and the other committee members. Continue reading “Advice on choice for new jail design-build firm to be heard by Monroe County commissioners, justice response committee still struggling” →

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” →

Park Cannon’s MLK Day message: Keep Knocking—it’s nonviolent, direct action

On Monday evening, Georgia state representative Park Cannon addressed a packed house at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in downtown Bloomington, Indiana.

“Today marks 662 days since I spent five hours in the Fulton County Jail for knocking on the governor’s door,” she told the crowd, which had assembled for the city’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday celebration.

Her talk drew on the episode at the governor’s door for its title: “Keep Knocking.”

Cannon also posed two questions for the crowd:

Do you have a deep understanding of what it means to move towards shared liberation?
Have you ever provided space for reflection and processing of grief, and injustice?

Continue reading “Park Cannon’s MLK Day message: Keep Knocking—it’s nonviolent, direct action” →

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” →

First Black woman chosen by Monroe County Dems for council: “Yes, I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

Jennifer Crossley.
Back (from left): Trent Deckard, Peter Iversen. Front: Kate Wiltz, Geoff McKim, Jennifer Crossley, Cheryl Munson.
Monroe County Democratic Party caucus (Dec. 19, 2021).
Jennifer Crossley with husband Justin and children Kendall (7), Mason (9), Sydney (14).

Jennifer Crossley was chosen at Sunday afternoon’s Democratic Party caucus to fill the vacant seat on the seven-member Monroe County council.

That means she’ll be stepping down as chair of the Monroe County Dems. Instead of Crossley, presiding over the caucus proceedings on Sunday was party vice chair David Henry.

The caucus was held in the auditorium of the Monroe County Public Library.

In her remarks delivered before the vote, Crossley said, “I’m running to fill this seat because I truly feel and believe that representation matters. And it is important to me that individuals from different backgrounds, lived experiences, and socio-economic statuses are in elected positions and get a seat at the table.”

Crossley added, “And as a Black woman, I feel that I bring this to this table. This is a historic moment in our county and our party, because if voted in this caucus today, I would be the first Black woman to serve on the county council.”

Crossley wrapped up her point by saying, “Yes, I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” Continue reading “First Black woman chosen by Monroe County Dems for council: “Yes, I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.”” →

2020 Bloomington city council: Out with the old, in with the new

At the last city council meeting of the year, on Dec. 18, 2019, Bloomington’s mayor, John Hamilton, delivered proclamations to the four outgoing councilmembers.

On Jan. 1, 2020, four new councilmembers were sworn in to start four-year terms, along with the five returning councilmembers, the mayor, John Hamilton, and the city clerk, Nicole Bolden.

Starting around noon on New Year’s Day in the city council chambers, the oaths of office for Bloomington’s 11 elected officials were administered. Continue reading “2020 Bloomington city council: Out with the old, in with the new” →

City clerk’s complaint prompts investigation, decision by city council to make public a summary: No evidence of racial animus by council staffer

In early August, Bloomington’s city clerk, Nicole Bolden, filed a complaint about the city council’s attorney/administrator, Dan Sherman, alleging that he was “disrespectful and rude” in his questioning of her about the posting of required legal notices for a meeting of the council’s rules committee. Bolden, who is black, further alleged that Sherman’s behavior, who is white, may have been motivated by personal animus related to her race or some other reason.

On Wednesday night, in a vote that was split 6–1–1, Bloomington’s city council decided to accept a statement of its executive committee and approve a motion to release publicly the summary of an investigation into Bolden’s allegations. The investigation did not find evidence to support Bolden’s allegations.

Some councilmembers who voted for the motion said they did so to clear Sherman’s name.

Chris Sturbaum was absent. Allison Chopra voted against the motion. Steve Volan, one of the executive committee members, abstained from the vote. Continue reading “City clerk’s complaint prompts investigation, decision by city council to make public a summary: No evidence of racial animus by council staffer” →