Agencies say proposed NAP changes will harm four local agencies
H-T Report
December 26, 2006A group of Bloomington agencies say proposed changes to the Neighborhood Assistance Program will significantly harm four local agencies:
In a letter sent to Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, state Sen. Vi Simpson, state Rep. Peggy Welch and state Rep. Matt Pierce, 12 Bloomington community agencies say the changes will result in significant cuts to:
• Monroe County United Ministries, which would be forced to cut eight children from its nationally accredited, sliding fee-scale child-care program. This would result in the removal of 18 percent of the children, mostly from urbanized areas, who utilize the sliding fee option.
• The Bloomington Area Arts Council, which would need to reduce programming access for 2,500 economically disadvantaged youth and low-income senior residents of Monroe and surrounding counties. These youth would miss the positive link between youth arts exposure and higher SAT test scores, reduced dropout rates and decreased disciplinary problems at school.
• Middle Way House, which uses NAP resources to leverage the HUD funds that sustain The Rise, the transitional housing program that has been recognized as effective in assisting very poor, homeless women and children successfully reintegrate into the mainstream community in the aftermath of traumatic violence. A cut in fundraising potential would threaten the leveraged funding and, therefore, the program.
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Central Indiana, which will see a reduction in staff and volunteer time totaling 3,272 hours. This drastic decrease in service hours will primarily touch the amount of time spent assisting each child and supporting volunteers. More than 60 hours each week will be lost under this proposed change. About 15 children a week will lose the ability to work with a mentoring adult.
The Neighborhood Assistance Program is administered by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority.
The letter also raises the following concerns:
• The ability of strong agencies to adequately serve the community will be artificially limited by the proposed guidelines.
• The new rules may work against the state’s interest in ensuring that NAP resources are used in the most effective manner.
• The period to comment on the proposed rules does not allow thorough analysis of the impact of these significant program changes.
The letter asks that implementation of the guidelines be delayed for one year.
“We believe the ability of strong agencies to adequately serve our community will be artificially limited by the proposed guidelines,†the letter states. “In Monroe County, four agencies were authorized to sell the maximum of $50,000 during 2006. We feel confident that all will reach that goal.â€
The letter says during 2007, those agencies will not again be eligible for $50,000. Under the proposed thresholds, the expected cuts will have significant negative effects on the Bloomington community.
The agencies signing the letter are Rhino’s Youth Center, Middle Way House, Martha’s House, Community Kitchen of Monroe County, Bloomington Area Arts Council, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, Hoosier Hills Food Bank, People and Animal Learning Services, Shalom Community Center, United Way of Monroe County, Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Central Indiana, Monroe County United Ministries and WonderLab .
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prisoners’ inventions
Browsing through boing boing at work, I found a link to a page and a book detailing inventions that people created out of necessity in prison. The project is described:
This project was a collaboration with Angelo, an incarcerated artist. He illustrated many incredible inventions made by prisoners to fill needs that the restrictive environment of the prison tries to supress. The inventions cover everything from homemade sex dolls, condoms, salt and peper shakers to chess sets. We collaborated on this project with Angelo for over two years. We had many additional collaborators who made a book, exhibition of re-created inventions and a prison cell possible. This page offers an overview of the project thus far.
Angelo, the incarcerated collaborator on this project says:
“When first approached with the idea of illustrating examples of inmate inventiveness, I was skeptical, thinking that there would be little of real interest to depict. When I set my mind to the task, though, I recognized the surprising range of inventions and innovations that I had witnessed. I had just become so used to it all that the uniqueness no longer registered.”
Spinal Muscular Atrophy
My friend Nathan forwarded me this message. It’s hard to be reminded of all the need in the world, which I think becomes more apparent around the holidays. I find I always catch myself doing some kind of triage – in a world of finite resources, is it fair that people coming from mostly backgrounds of privilege and imprisoned for political action or members of the independent music scene can so easy to leverage digital networks to drum up grassroots financial support while others stay completely off the radar for people’s holiday charity? But this kind of thinking is completely assy and ultimately infinitely regressive. In a world of finite resources, it seems you can only help where you can, everywhere you can.
J. Robbins–whose name you know if you were ever a fan of Jawbox, Burning Airlines, or the dozens of records he produced–needs our help. His infant son, Cal, has been diagnosed Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which is usually fatal before the age of two. Paying for the treatments Cal needs are not covered by J’s insurance and are very expensive. Please consider donating at the link below. Merry Christmas everybody, and thanks for being so good to rivulets this past year.
Remember: Jesus doesn’t care about shopping.
nytimes articles about prisons
Towards the end of brunch at Mary’s Corinna and Riley showed up with a copy of the NY Times. As the year comes to a close, I was once again reminded of how there seems to be a crazy consciousness of “prison issues” in the media in the last year. I don’t quite understand it, and I can only attribute it to the reality that so many people are incarcerated in the US that it’s something that has come to touch many people’s lives and cannot be ignored.
the best laid plans
So the last minute letter writing/knitting event didn’t go so well. It was basically just me and Shannon hanging out, knitting, and telling stories, which was fine. Doing the research for the event, I learned a lot more about the Finelight’s development plans, the connectedness of the individuals driving the development, and the rapid pace of the plans. If you’re interested in sorting through a big stack of articles about the brief history of these really serious chnages, I’d be happy to share. I’ve also uploaded the handout that I made with the addresses of some of the stakeholders in the development project. Link
In the end, I got a tiny bit of mitten knitting done, and wrote this letter to the HT.:
Mayor Mark Kruzan may remain optimistic about the future of Finelight’s development plans on Kirkwood, but the actions of the business community and city government in the last year leave me with nothing but a sense of dread. Whether the final reality for Bloomington will be Finelight’s “plan A” or “plan B”, the city has already been adversely affected by these plans. We can see this both in the loss of Ladyman’s, a longstanding and singular community nexus that brought Bloomingtonians together across divisions of class, race, lifestyle, and generation, and the pending temporary displacement of some of the Shalom Center’s essential community services.
Many of the proposed timelines for development at the corner of Kirkwood and Washington move at an alarming pace. Whether it is the patrons of Ladyman’s, those who receive services from the Shalom Center, or, quite possibly, users of public transportation in Bloomington, many in our community have been or will be affected by these decisions. It is disrespectful and irresponsible to proceed at a pace at which it seems impossible to acknowledge and accommodate the realities of all whose lives will be changed by development in Bloomington. We have already felt the weight of what can be lost or changed by decisions. What will the community, as a whole, gain or have constructed by Finelight’s plans? Have the proposal’s supporters in the city government, business community, and local media been able to answer this fundamental question?
Even though both Ladyman’s and the Shalom Center have received support or offers of support from the city in an attempt to soften the impact of development decisions, within the current structure of political and economic power in Bloomington, those institutions are at the mercy of the decisions of others, and as an extension of that, so are the people served by those institutions. As people living in Bloomington, we must ask ourselves, do we want to live in a community where priceless assets such as Ladyman’s or the Shalom Center must constantly maneuver to accommodate forces shaping our community, or where they are the institutions that drive changes in our community? At the very least, can their voices and needs, can all of our voices and needs, play an equal part in shaping the future of Bloomington?
The Herald Times’ December 19 opinion piece about Finelight’s plans spoke of the contributions of Bloomington’s “mostly younger, mostly creative-class” population to local business and to the community as a whole. To hinge the benefits of such a group of people solely on Finelight’s ability or inability to construct a new headquarters in downtown Bloomington seems exaggerated. Certainly, this allegedly beneficial population shares a great deal in common with the university community, a population that, for better and for worse, will not be leaving Bloomington any time soon. In the end, though, even as a member of the much heralded and accommodated “mostly younger, mostly creative-class” segment of Bloomington’s population, I don’t want to see this community transformed to so exclusively facilitate my livelihood or lifestyle or that of people like me. Even in the cafe’s absence, we would do well not to forget the reality that Ladyman’s so clearly exposed – that as Bloomingtonians, our lives are much closer than our apparent divisions, and that if we are to prosper, we should prosper together.
disaster show 2006.12.07 | politcal prisoners
set list:
- research
- lightning strikes
- untitled (it’s new)
- death at an early age
- this is where we’re from
- new song
- human contradiction i
- human contradiction ii
Update: I’ve uploaded the slideshow that we projected for this show. Link
post office lobby hours changing
The warm weather the last few days has been really amazing.  It seems like people were on the streets late into the night last night, just enjoying the warmth of the air. I rode through campus and people were walking through the night gabbing loudly on cell phones as they walked, a combination of giddy excitement for those who had completed their finals and concern for those who hadn’t. It gave me that strange meloncholy feeling that I remembered from when I was in school at the end of terms when you would have this fast transition around campus between frantic activity and a lonely desolation. The nice thing about living in a small town is that people are instantly recognizeable, even from a distance, and as I was headed back towards Boxcar, I saw the outline of Tyson wizzing around the block on a skateboard, his motion relaxed and fluid.
I stopped at the post office and saw the lady who usually sleeps there resting, as usual, by standing up and letting the weight of her upper body fall on her shopping cart. As I entered the post office, I noticed a sign on the door reporting that later in the week, the lobby would start closing at 8:00PM and reopen at 3:00AM. Surely this is a measure to keep people experiencing homelessness from sleeping in the lobby. It’s sad because I always thought it was a nice arrangement, how the post office unknowingly offered shelter to people from the rain or cold in a way that used no additional resources, and for some, seemed to work better for their lives than a formal shelter ever could. I guess those days are over, and I hope that it stays warm long enough for people to find a new lobby somewhere.
outdoor ap design
I’ve ben thinking a lot about wireless networks and building community wireless networks lately. I installed OpenWRT on a WRT54G, injected DC into the ethernet cable, and built an outdoor enclosure at my friend’s house. I was looking at different enclosures and the ones at the hardware store and cost $25. So, I looked around the house and stumbled upon the ubiquitous fish tub as a solution. Then today, when I was digging around for antenna designs, I came upon this outdoor AP design that uses the fish tub too! It got me stoked to feel like people can come up with the same DIY solution independently of each other.
bloomington veteran resources
Someone wrote pages asking for literature for veterans. He said that incarcerated vets are pretty neglected by the government/military. So, I’m trying to collect contact info for veterans groups so I can ask them about getting literature to make available to incarcerated people through pages.
IU Office of Veterans Affairs
Georgann Wilson gwilson@indiana.edu
http://dsa.indiana.edu/vet.html
812.856.1985
Monroe County Veterans’ Affairs Office
http://www.co.monroe.in.us/veteransaffairs/index.htm
(812) 349-2568
B-Line Trail
“This is the most significant economic development project on the City’s agenda. It’s monumental in its scope and importance.” – Mayor Mark Kruzan
Chiara sent me the city’s page about this project. Sadly, while I was aware of the city’s plans to turn the old CSX railroad grade that runs through downtown into a bike path, I didn’t know exactly what the form of that consturction would be. Also sadly, I missed out on the public comment opportunities that seemed to happen in the last year. Phase I construction starts summer 2007.
The mockup photo above is pretty silly looking with an ugly, expensive-looking Columbus, Indiana style bridge replacing the charming stencil-artwork covered train bridge that now crosses 3rd St. I also thought it was funny how the plan depicts murals on the back of the convetion center, but how a friend’s charming stencil mural of manatees near that area was painted over in a matter of days.
Of course I like bike paths, but this project seems expensive for something that seems like it could be usefully constructed in a much more simple way. My concerns are that the project would be constructed with the primary intent being recreation and commerce with no regard to the trail as a transporation route. The implication of this is that it further solidifies the perception (most dangerously by motorists) that cycling or other pedestrian traffic exists only as a recereational activity and not as a legitimate or desireable mode of transportation. Traversing the 3 lanes of traffic on a north-south journey on Walnut or College is one of the more harrowing cycling experiences in town, and it seems like this trail, paralleling those streets, with the proper support, could be invaluable for encouraging bike use to travel around the city.
From an asthetic standpoint, what I miss as a geographical feature in Bloomington as a river. I think it’s an interesting design paradigm, to approach something like a bike path as a geographic feature that gives continuity to a landscape or area rather than as a development platform for commerce or park structures. I guess what I like about train tracks, or rivers is their isolation from their surroundings and how one’s interaction with the geography can be pretty personal and unmediated. Ugly bridges, excercise courses and coffe kiosks seem to be pretty far from all of that. Link