Bloomington mayoral primary forum: Are we scared of being the best at taking care of the less fortunate?

2023 Democratic Primary candidates for mayor of Bloomington, from left: Don Griffin, Susan Sandberg, and Kerry Thomson. (March 28, 2023 Heading Home forum)

At a Tuesday evening event for mayoral hopefuls in the Democratic Party’s May 2 primary, moderators from Heading Home of South Central Indiana quizzed the candidates about housing for low-income residents and homelessness.

The hosts also flipped the usual script for part of the event.

Each candidate had submitted one question for the audience to answer on arrival at the venue—Crestmont Boys and Girls Club on the north side of town. The questions were accessible through a QR code that appeared on a handout at the reception table.

Out of the roughly 100 people who attended, 58 responded to the three questions.

Co-moderator Leon Gordon, who is administrative director for Bloomington Housing Authority, reported a perfect 50-50 split for the question submitted by Don Griffin:

Are we as a community scared of being the best at taking care of those that are less fortunate?

Griffin then gave his take on the response to the audience poll question, followed by Susan Sandberg and Kerry Thomson. Continue reading “Bloomington mayoral primary forum: Are we scared of being the best at taking care of the less fortunate?” →

Independent hopeful makes uninvited appearance at Bloomington mayoral primary candidate forum

From left: Don Griffin, Kwan Wallace, Joe Davis, Susan Sandberg, and Kerry Thomson.

From left: Don Griffin, Kwan Wallace, and Joe Davis.

From left: Kira Richardson, Jim Sims, Don Griffin, and Joe Davis.

From left: Joe Davis, Don Griffin, Susan Sandberg, and Kerry Thomson.

Who gets invited to participate in mayoral candidate forums? What happens if an uninvited mayoral hopeful shows up to participate?

With early voting in the May 2 municipal primary races starting in a little over a week, those questions got asked and answered at a Saturday event hosted by the Kappa Tau Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

Alpha Kappa Alpha is one the Divine Nine—that’s the nickname for the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), which is an umbrella council composed of historically Black fraternities and sororities.

The forum, which was held at the Crestmont Boys and Girls Club on the north side of town, included the three Democratic Party primary candidates: Don Griffin, Susan Sandberg, and Kerry Thomson.

Not invited was Joe Davis, who has filed the paperwork to form a campaign committee called “Joe Mama for Mayor.” Davis has not submitted the required 352 signatures to be placed on the Nov. 7, 2023 ballot for the general city election.

But Davis arrived at the venue on Saturday, ready to participate. In the end, he was allowed to sit at the table with a hand-written “Joe Mama Bear Davis” name card sitting in front of his spot on the table, and to answer questions in turn with the other questions.

That’s not the way the Alpha Kappa Alpha wanted the event to unfold. Continue reading “Independent hopeful makes uninvited appearance at Bloomington mayoral primary candidate forum” →

Poll: Wide-open race for Bloomington mayor with a month to go until early voting starts

With just a month to go before early voting starts for the May 2 Democratic Party primary, a poll conducted from Wednesday through Friday of this week shows that any of the three candidates could easily wind up being the Democratic Party’s nominee.

No Republican candidate is running for mayor.

Among the survey respondents who chose one of the three candidates, here’s how they sorted out: Kerry Thomson (18 percent); Sandberg (15 percent); and Griffin (9 percent).

The margin of error of the poll was +/- 4 percent.

But well over half (58 percent) of those who completed the survey said they’re still not sure who they’ll vote for.

The large percentage of undecided voters, together with the small pointwise differences between candidates, indicates that, right now at least, any of the three candidates could prevail in the Democratic Party’s primary election.

The poll results summarize the completed survey responses from 594 people, who were drawn from a list of registered voters in the city of Bloomington, and who indicated that they plan to vote in the Democratic Party’s primary election. The poll used a text-to-web methodology

The poll was conducted for The B Square by Public Policy Polling, a company based in North Carolina. Continue reading “Poll: Wide-open race for Bloomington mayor with a month to go until early voting starts” →

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” →

Column: In Bloomington, serving as mayor is a big job, so get ready to vote

In the city of Bloomington, the job of mayor is not ceremonial.

That’s different from many cities across America, which use the council-manager form of local government.

In cities that use a council-manager style of government, the city council hires a city manager to oversee the city’s administration and operations, including the appointment of department heads.

The mayor in a council-manager system will typically preside over city council meetings and serve as the city’s representative on various formal occasions. That’s why the council-manager form of local government is sometimes called a weak-mayor system.

But Bloomington is a strong-mayor city, where it’s the mayor who oversees the operations of city government and hires the department heads.

This year, Bloomington voters will elect a new mayor to a four-year term. Incumbent John Hamilton has announced he is not seeking re-election.

So it’s worth putting some time into learning about the candidates and making an effort to vote. Continue reading “Column: In Bloomington, serving as mayor is a big job, so get ready to vote” →

3 Bloomington mayoral hopefuls speak at first forum

Don Griffin, Aver’s Public House, Feb. 21, 2023

Susan Sandberg, Aver’s Public House, Feb. 21, 2023

Kerry Thomson, Aver’s Public House, Feb. 21, 2023

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” →

Holcomb visits Bloomington, Cook Group president tells locals: “We can’t sit around and wait for the governor…to solve our problems.”

Eric Holcomb.

Pamela Whitten.

Pete Yonkman.

It’s a sign. (Feb. 16, 2023)

On Thursday, the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce hosted a luncheon at the Monroe Convention Center featuring Indiana governor Eric Holcomb.

The main event highlighted Holcomb as he fielded questions from Indiana University president Pamela Whitten, as the two sat in easy chairs in front of an audience of about 450 people.

But for many in attendance, it was the remarks delivered by Cook Group president Pete Yonkman, towards the start of the program, that might have left a more lasting impression. Cook is Bloomington’s second largest employer behind Indiana University.

Yonkman said at the start that he did not have prepared speech to deliver, as he does on most occasions.

But the impromptu remarks that Yonkman did make were organized around one basic theme: Bloomington’s local leaders need to overcome their differences to make progress on important issues.

Specific issues that Yonkman highlighted included housing, conditions at the county jail, and the lack of progress on the convention center expansion. Continue reading “Holcomb visits Bloomington, Cook Group president tells locals: “We can’t sit around and wait for the governor…to solve our problems.”” →

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” →

Colocation of police with city administration big theme of Bloomington council deliberations on 5-4 approval of Showers building deal

Bloomington city councilmember Susan Sandberg (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Kate Rosenbarger (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city council member Sue Sgambelluri (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Dave Rollo (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Matt Flaherty (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington city councilmember Steve Volan (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington police chief Mike Diekhoff (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington mayor John Hamilton (Jan. 25, 2023).

Former city councilmember David David Sabbagh speaks against the Showers building purchase (Jan. 25, 2023).

Police union president Paul Post (Jan. 25, 2023).

Bloomington police detective Jeff Rodgers (Jan. 25, 2023).

The view is from the west of the Showers building. The pink outline shows the portion of the building that Bloomington has made an accepted offer to purchase from CFC Properties. The image is from the Pictometry module of Monroe County’s property lookup system.

On Wednesday night, Bloomington’s city council took action that will, as councilmember Dave Rollo put it, shape the city’s public safety building footprint “for decades to come.”

The council split 5–4 on a vote to approve the Bloomington redevelopment commission’s purchase agreement with CFC Properties—for the 64,000 square feet in the western portion of the former Showers Brothers furniture factory that currently houses city hall.

Asked by Rollo if he agreed that the “decades-to-come” description of the deal’s impact is accurate, Bloomington’s mayor John Hamilton confirmed that he did.

The deal negotiated by the RDC with CFC Properties carries a price tag of $8.75 million. The proposed move includes another $14.75 million to renovate and re-configure the Showers building space. Continue reading “Colocation of police with city administration big theme of Bloomington council deliberations on 5-4 approval of Showers building deal” →

Yes to purchase of west Showers building, says Bloomington city council on 5–4 vote

Bloomington city hall’s footprint inside the former Showers Brothers furniture factory building on Morton Street will expand by 64,000 square feet to include the western portion of the building, where the city’s police station and fire department administrative headquarters will be located.

That’s because at its Wednesday meeting, the city council voted 5–4 to approve an ordinance that appropriates $29.5 million in bond proceeds, which includes $8.75 million for the purchase of the western portion of the Showers building.

It’s part of Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s plan to put both the city’s main police station and fire department administration in the same historic city hall building. The proposed move is part of a bigger plan estimated at over $30-million—which includes reconstructing the flood-damaged Fire Station #1 and remodeling Fire Station #3.

Approval of the bond issuance itself had come in early December last year. Continue reading “Yes to purchase of west Showers building, says Bloomington city council on 5–4 vote” →