The 812

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...

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 b...

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 Bloomin...

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 dedi...

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 t...

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 cha...

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 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.

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...

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...

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 Pl...

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 t...

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 the...

David Henry was first on in February, in his role as chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party, to explain the complicated caucus process that elevated Courtney Daily to the District 5 Bloomington City Council seat. Now he appears as an elected official in his own right, having won an at-large seat on the Monroe County Council. On January 1, when he takes the seat of friend-of-the-show Geoff McK...

Adam Nahas of Cyclops Studios, a sculptor, was also the founder and executive director of the former Artisan Alley, an artist's cooperative and nonprofit incubator  from its founding in 2011 until 2023. It folded earlier this year. During its existence, Artisan Alley provided a community for artists, offering affordable studio space, and evolved to meet the needs of local artists through vari...

Today, Part II of our interview with April Hennessey and Erin Cooperman, the president and vice president respectively of the Board of Trustees of the Monroe County Community School Corporation. We talk about the challenges school boards have managing superintendents, and about issues that impact public school enrollment and funding from the state, like: the decline in K-12 enrollment that began e...

Our next two episodes are devoted to a new topic for this show about local government: the school board. There are two school districts in Monroe County: by far the larger of the two is the Monroe County Community School Corporation, which serves more than 10,000 students in more than 20 different school buildings. Neither city nor county government has any direct involvement in the oversight and...

People on campuses across the country are wondering what the fate of equity efforts will be in these charged political times, and IU's is no exception. One organization asking existential questions is Students for Equity in Public Affairs (SEPA), an organization founded and run by students in the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. We talk with two of its representatives,...

Until not too long ago, Danny Weddle was a builder of bespoke tiny homes. That got him interested in building affordable homes more cost-effectively. Now the co-founder and chief design officer of Terran Robotics, his company is building walls out of earth from the construction site... using 3-D printers, as though subsoil were just so much 3-D filament... which are run by robots run by AI — which...

Middle Way House is the nonprofit that supports survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault through shelter, protection, counseling, permanent housing, and more. It is still a big agency to be sure, and addressing a distressingly great need. Executive Director Carrie Stillions gives us the virtual tour of Middle Way and all it does, and talks frankly about their budget plans with sources of...

Monroe County still has precinct voting. On Election Day, you go to a particular polling place based on what precinct you live in. But there's a new idea out there: voting centers, which allow you to vote at any polling place regardless of where you live. In mid-2023, Monroe County's Election Board created a nine-member committee to study whether it would be a good idea for its residents...

On the B-Line Trail downtown, there's a bust of Kathryn Janeway, captain of the USS Voyager, from the Star Trek series of the same name. How it got there is our subject today.  Our guests are Peter Kaczmarczyk and Lee Lawmaster, former presidents and members still of the Janeway Collective, the organization that fundraised for, designed and installed a statue dedicated to the fictional captai...

The city's efforts to cultivate entrepreneurship is embodied in the buildings that were auxiliary to the Showers Brothers Furniture Factory, a third of which famously became Bloomington's city hall in the mid-90s, and another third of which was acquired from IU by the county and is now the Monroe County Government Center. Several smaller brick buildings have been preserved and remade int...

The last time Courtney Daily was on the show, in February, she was a candidate for city council. She won the District 5 seat in a Democratic party caucus; after 9 months, we're asking the most junior member of council what it's been like. We talk about the drama of that caucus, what's surprised her about being an elected official, and some of the issues that have recently been broug...

We're going into the belly of the development beast on today's show, with someone who's been involved in every aspect of the life cycle of a building: Mark Figg, a developer who's also done property management and appraisal. A local resident born and raised in Monroe County, he's built several multi-family apartment projects here, starting with the building many non-studen...