We continue our series of Work Sessions — interviews with members of the local media discussing issues involving local government — today with Jill Bond, News Director and Editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times newspaper. We ask about her editing philosophy (which she just gave a TEDxIU talk about). Then we dive into some of the big issues the city's paper of record has been tackling lately, including ambulance service in Monroe County, the Monroe County Community School Corporation's need to do...
Mar 14, 2025•35 min•Season 3Ep. 177
Forty years ago, Bloomington's downtown was all but over. Half of the land had been cleared for parking lots to compete with auto-centric development at College Mall and other places on the outskirts of the city. A coalition of downtown businesses assembled to try to reverse the trend. As a result, Bloomington is one of the few cities in the state that saved its downtown, through the rehabilitation of many historic buildings. And, to give the community civic meeting space, an old car dealership ...
Mar 12, 2025•38 min•Season 3Ep. 176
When friend of the show Geoff McKim was on the show last May, he was in the final year of his four-term, 16-year career as a member of the Monroe County Council. Now in retirement, he rejoins us to discuss issues of the new term, like the development of the new justice complex, and the impact of the recently discovered $3.8 million shortfall in the county budget. He also looks back on his county council career, and talks about his new role as one of the seven members of the joint city/county Cap...
Mar 10, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 175
Our topic today is the Center for Sustainable Living , a peculiarly Bloomington institution. Since the 1990s, it has been a kind of not-for-profit co-op, foster projects that help the environment or allow people to live more sustainably. Their projects include Discardia which puts on the annual Trashion/Refashion show at the Buskirk Chumley; the Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network which advises homeowners on how to solarize their homes; and the Bloomington Community Bike Project. The Cente...
Mar 07, 2025•34 min•Season 3Ep. 174
Our guests today are from Tandem, the perinatal and reproductive resource center. Through Jack Hopkins grants, the city of Bloomington helped Tandem launch in Bloomington five years ago, with a certified nurse midwife, who's considered an APRN, an advanced practice registered nurse, in the state of Indiana. They now also offer a postpartum house with overnight rooms and are building a birth center, all at their location on East Third Street near the Bypass. Julie Duhon, the center's executive di...
Mar 05, 2025•40 min•Season 3Ep. 173
In 1991 the city of Bloomington sold the rights to its 1915 City Hall building to nonprofit groups. One group made most of it what you know today as the John Waldron Arts Center. Another group acquired the attached old Fire Station No. 1: with the money it raised they made it the home of Bloomington's community radio station, WFHB, which got its call letters because they stand for Fire House Broadcasting. That conveyance of a city building has been a key reason for WFHB's successful operation fo...
Mar 03, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 172
It's not just a new era nationally, it's a new one locally. We have the other elected county newbie on our show (besides County Council Member David Henry, who appeared late last year), and that's County Commissioner Jody Madeira. She's taking a swing at all the big local issues of the day -- the new jail, the county health department, the county's new development ordinance -- and some of the niceties of how the commissioners collectively do business day to day. Support the show A production of ...
Feb 28, 2025•38 min•Season 3Ep. 171
Our topic today is Kirkwood Avenue, specifically the five blocks of East Kirkwood between the Courthouse Square and the Sample Gates, which many people consider to be the heart of Bloomington. Since 2020, the city has closed public rights-of-way to benefit local restaurants. Some establishments, mostly around the Square, have rented adjacent metered parking spaces as outdoor dining space. On Kirkwood, the city closed whole blocks to allow restaurants to host diners while social distancing. It al...
Feb 26, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 170
Cicada Cinema is a volunteer-run organization which calls itself a "pop-up movie theatre". Since 2016 they've been showing around Bloomington underrepresented and what they call "underseen" films, pretty much just for the sake of cinema. The city Arts Commission strategically funded their organization with a grant to show movies in local parks, which was co-sponsored by the city Parks and Rec Dept. and promoted in their annual Program Guide, which this show recently featured. Cicada Cinema's Jos...
Feb 24, 2025•34 min•Season 3Ep. 169
In September we interviewed the director of the Sycamore Land Trust, John Lawrence, about the idea of a land trust -- a nonprofit that preserves land from development and maintains landscape in its natural state. It also runs an environmental program that connects people to that nature. But somebody has to manage those 144 properties, their more than 11,500 acres. That's another story, for which we turn to Sycamore's Lead Stewardship Director, Chris Fox. He talks about how he and his team deal w...
Feb 21, 2025•31 min•Season 3Ep. 168
One of the most high-profile developers in the area is Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County, famously builders of affordable housing (and formerly headed by current Mayor Kerry Thomson, who was a guest on this show back in August). We talk with Wendi Goodlett, current President and CEO, and Lindsey Boswell, Development Director, about their process for finding potential residents and training them to qualify for Habitat homes; how many houses are currently have under construction at Osage Place...
Feb 19, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 167
Today's local-media guest is visual journalist Jeremy Hogan, the co-owner and editor of The Bloomingtonian , the local independent hard-news website which he founded five years ago after being laid off from The Herald-Times , where he was a staff photographer for more than 20 years. We talk with him about how he chooses stories, and some of the biggest topics he's covered lately, like the unhoused and the Gaza protests in Dunn Meadow. He also talks about how the business of journalism has change...
Feb 17, 2025•35 min•Season 3Ep. 166
Bloomington is rightly proud of its namesake greenery and its long-standing status as a Tree City. But the growth of the city's built environment over the past several decades has cut its tree population by more than half. This was the impetus for the creation in 2021 of Canopy Bloomington, a nonprofit devoted to getting citizens to understand the importance of trees, to getting them to plant new trees, and to getting them to care for the city's tree canopy. Unlike most tree-planting efforts tha...
Feb 14, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 165
There's a reason that the city's Parks & Recreation Department is a two-time winner of the National Recreation and Park Association's prestigious Gold Medal. Their Program Guide is proof of it: 40 pages listing all the programs, special events, sports, fitness, outdoor, garden, and other opportunities open to little kids, seniors and everyone in between. We go through the Guide with Community Relations Manager Julie Ramey, who highlights coming events like classes, seminars, the 50+ and Kids...
Feb 12, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 164
Our guests today are from the Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington. It serves as sort of an arts chamber of commerce, representing six types of arts genres -- visual, literary, music, dance, theatre/film, and galleries/venues/festivals. Artists or organizations in each genre have very different needs, but all genres are represented on the Arts Alliance's Board of Directors. The organization owns the Arts Alliance Center in College Mall, and has just taken over management of the By Hand Gallery, ...
Feb 10, 2025•35 min•Season 3Ep. 163
Hopi Stosberg returns to The 812 a year later, as the new president of the council in only her sophomore year. We talk about some of her priorities for her leadership year, including changes to the Unified Development Ordinance initiated by Council late last year, including making affordability incentives more practical, and returning Single Room Occupancy dwellings to legal status in the city. She also talks about the budget process and steps the Council is considering to make it better. (And.....
Feb 07, 2025•33 min•Season 3Ep. 162
If you mix together your grade school math class, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and life skills into a blender, add lemon, and press "liquefy"...you get Lemonade Day, which encourages kids across the community to set up lemonade stands on a Saturday in June. It's a fun way to learn the basics of business, which can be useful even if a kid doesn't ever start one and becomes just another consumer. Laura Blaker, Events Director at the Boys and Girls Club of Bloomington, is our guest today a...
Feb 05, 2025•39 min•Season 3Ep. 161
Are you fighting with someone -- a spouse, the city, a landlord, a tenant, even a family member -- and you just can't reconcile with them? At least here in Bloomington, there's a nonprofit devoted exclusively to mediating disputes. It's a nonprofit called the Community Justice and Mediation Center, or CJAM for short. CJAM has helped negotiate restorative justice between victims and offenders; separations and divorces; landlord-tenant disputes; even the custody of pets. And they get results. And....
Feb 03, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 160
Instead of a guest from a city or county board or commission, which we do frequently, today's show is about ALL the city's boards and commissions, and how they get managed. Which, until now, has been haphazardly, by the individual departments that act as their liaisons. The city has created a new position in the Clerk's office just to centrally administer the city's dozens of boards and commissions. Our guest is friend of the show Jennifer Crossley. She was our guest in June, in her capacity as ...
Jan 31, 2025•38 min•Season 3Ep. 159
This week we're inviting back some of our favorite guests with updates from their corners. Today we welcome back Holly McLauchlin to talk about the latest at City of Bloomington Utilities, where she's the Communications Manager. This time we ask about the new wastewater rate and how CBU handles rate increases in general; the health of Lake Monroe, the primary water source for the Bloomington metro area; and the installation of fiber across the city and how the digging sometimes affecting water s...
Jan 29, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 158
We welcome back to the show one of our favorite raconteurs, Christopher Emge from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, who appeared a year ago when the show was first starting. We discuss current issues on the Chamber's agenda, including Bloomington's convention center expansion, public transit going outside the city for the first time, and the question of whether and how to dedicate certain streets downtown for exclusive bus or pedestrian use. (He also tells us about his new title, whic...
Jan 27, 2025•38 min•Season 3Ep. 157
Diverting waste from the environment is a value held dear by most Monroe Countians. There's a local government agency independent of Monroe County or its settlements that oversees the management of solid waste (not to be confused with human waste, which is managed by City of Bloomington Utilities). It's the Waste Reduction District of Monroe County, and it's a taxing district like the library or the school corporations: with a separate line item from Bloomington or Ellettsville on a property tax...
Jan 24, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 156
We've had a number of guests who represent city commissions on this show. Today, our subject is the Commission on the Status of Black Males, a very busy board that hosts events at least six times a year, including their Outstanding Leaders of Tomorrow awards, their "Barbershop" health initiative, and the Million Father March at the beginning of each school year. Our guest is its chair, James Sanders. He's an award winner himself: for his involvement with the Commission, he won the 2024 Be More P...
Jan 22, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 155
Our first guest of the new year and the third season of The 812 is Carrie Albright, chair of the Bloomington Environmental Commission, one of the city's oldest. She talks about the work they do advocating for the city to balance urban growth with environmental preservation. They address everything from water quality and biodiversity to newer challenges like light pollution. And we talk about the popular annual Eco-Heroes art contest that they oversee. Our website is new and improving! It's under...
Jan 20, 2025•38 min•Season 3Ep. 154
The 812 is back with a new season of interviews with the people that make your community go 'round! New episodes drop beginning Monday, January 20. We're looking forward to an interesting crop of new episodes, and other innovations to be announced soon. See you next Monday! Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.
Jan 13, 2025•41 sec
Shelli Yoder is the dynamic state senator from District 40, representing Bloomington. She explains the statehouse for us, then talks about 2025 and what treats the statehouse might have in store: the $1 billion budget miscalculation; birth control, IVF, and abortion; a farm bill she's sponsoring; and, for localities like Bloomington, topics like annexation and universal school vouchers. This is our last episode of Season 2, and of 2024. We'll be back with another season of shows beginning in mid...
Dec 20, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 153
It's our penultimate show of our season 2, which began in August, and of the year 2024. Today we meet Lilliana Young, a member of the Bloomington/Monroe County Human Rights Commission, to talk about Bloomington's performance on the Municipal Equality Index. That's the Human Rights Campaign's annual report on how cities across the nation are doing by the LGBTQ+ population. This is the tenth consecutive year that Bloomington has achieved a perfect score on that Index, and we dig into why. We also ...
Dec 18, 2024•34 min•Season 2Ep. 152
Director of Animal Care and Control for the City of Bloomington, Virgil Sauder tells us all about how the city, Monroe County and town of Ellettsville collaborate to manage domesticated pets in the area. He clears up some myths about how the city animal shelter works, and talks about what he's seen come through their doors in his almost 20 years of service. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved....
Dec 16, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 151
Today we're remembering Monroe County Councilmember Cheryl Munson. A professor emerita in the IU Dept of Anthropology, she volunteered throughout the community, and also served in local politics, first on the township level, then as an at large member of the County Council. In the interview we recorded with her in June, she describes herself and the Council, and we talk about the issues of the day: the question of the county jail, county employee salaries, and how she was looking forward to a fo...
Dec 13, 2024•34 min•Season 2Ep. 150
Our guest today is the director of the Bloomington affiliate of I Support the Girls. It's a nonprofit organization that started in the District of Columbia to get donations of old bras and unused feminine hygiene products to women in the local homeless shelter. It's now a global organization aimed at "supporting girls, women and folx in need with products to support and maintain their dignity." Marsha Lovejoy founded the local affiliate, and for her work in March was named Woman of the Year by t...
Dec 11, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 149
