The 812

In the incorporated place that is Bloomington's primary official suburb, there's no mayor. The part-time town council in Ellettsville is the legislative and executive body -- sort of like the board of commissioners that runs the county -- but they're also the fiscal body. They're everything; in Indiana, only counties and cities have separation of powers.  Scott Oldham is in his...

Today is a Work Session, an interview with a member of local media where we talk about the city and local issues of the day. Michael "Big Mike" Glab is a former reporter for the Chicago Reader who's covered every kind of news, hard and soft. After 50 years in the Windy City, he eventually found himself in Limestone Country, where he became the host of Big Talk, a half-hour interview...

The 812 converts to "El Ocho Doce" for the day, to welcome representatives from the Commission on Hispanic and Latino Affairs, which "works to identify and research the issues which impact those populations in Bloomington, especially in the areas of health, education, public safety and cultural competency." They help break the language barrier that prevents many residents from...

One person's trash is another's treasure...or so the Trashion Refashion Runway Show tries to demonstrate. The 16th annual event will be presented by Plato's Closet at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre April 13. The virtually all-volunteer event presents and models clothes designed almost entirely from waste, recycled, or upcycled materials. We talk about promoting sustainability through h...

Even before they make the formal announcement later this morning, we have details on the official revival of the Taste of Bloomington, the summer celebration of this city's bustling local restaurant scene that happened for 35 years before the pandemic said we couldn't have nice things. Anyway, the Taste is back -- for at least one year, anyway -- courtesy of the Chocolate Moose. It'...

We talk about the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association. It's run by a city board of directors appointed by mayor and council. The BUEA oversees the city's Urban Enterprise Zone. Businesses and residents of the Zone can benefit tax-wise from the Enterprise Zone's Investment Deduction; revenue from the EZID generates a pot of money in the mid-six-figures annually. Someone has to f...

A person who advocates in court for those who can't for themselves is known as a guardian ad litem. But there's an even greater need for children who have suffered abuse and/or neglect and find themselves lost in the justice system. Every state except North Dakota has court-appointed special advocates, or "CASAs" for short. Despite being an integral part of the local justice sy...

Today we're talking specifically about a topic that could take several episodes to discuss: the primary source of drinking water in metropolitan Bloomington. The reservoir commonly known as Lake Monroe is the largest body of water inside the state of Indiana. It was the state's idea to put a university in the middle of nowhere in 1818, and the city that grew up around it was always in da...

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,...

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 rehabili...

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 c...

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 advi...

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 c...

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...

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 ordinanc...

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 Kirkw...

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 th...

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 w...

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 the...

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 th...

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 plan...

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...

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...

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. Sh...

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 beco...