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 .
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
Disaster, Wasteland DC, Morrow @ Hospital. 7p. $4.
stitch and bitch: knitting and letter writing @ boxcar books. 7-9p.
Crafting Community: An Evening of Knitting and/or Letter Writing
Friday, December 22
Boxcar Books and Community Center [310A S. Washington St.]
7-9pm
Bloomington is changing in terms of the structural landscape of the city, the demographics of it’s inhabitants, and the development and political decisions that face the community. Despite opportunities for public review, many of the decisions being made that affect the community as a whole, feel completely out of the hands of most people. We grumble, gossip, and debate but do our words and concerns change anything?
The idea is simple – people can get together around a simple activity like knitting and talk about their perceptions, feelings, and ideas about the things that are affecting us as we live in Bloomington. We can share information about the things that are happening around us and use our shared information and perspective to solidify our individual feelings and opinions. Then, through writing letters to the editors of local media, politicians, city officials, developers, and business owners, we can share our voices with those who make sweeping decisions around the city of Bloomington. We hope that our voices can help shape the decisions being made, but if they can’t, at least no one can claim that the decisions were made ignorant of the impact that they would have on the city’s residents.
I’m thinking that this Friday’s topic of letter writing will be the closing of Ladyman’s Cafe and the plans for Finelight’s development of the cafe’s former location. Please bring any news articles, planning documents, press releases or other information that you would like to share with others.
This event is open to everyone in the Bloomington community. You can come to knit, to write letters, or just hang out. Hopefully we can all take a few moments to let the rants and conversations many have had over the past few weeks coalesce and turn them into clear expressions of anger, frustration, or hope that can be shared with others in Bloomington.
Take care,
Geoff
boxcar technology wg project ideas
- Mass inventory edit feature to Boxcar inventory. This would allow user to change inventory details for multiple inventory entries all at once. Essentially this would allow you to change everything that you can in the inventory edit form.
- Barcode-based inventory entry
- Integrate POS and inventory
- Make pages card catalog/inventory electronic
opening hours
a common question that i have is when various places are open around bloomington, so i’m going to keep a running list here
- opportunity house – M-Sa 9a-2p
- goodwill (both east and west side locations) – M-Sa 9a-9p