Tag: Bloomington

transportation issues on wfhb’s interchange

One of the things that’s nice about living in a town as small as Bloomington is that the connection between different dynamics and forces is much more clear.  Two development plans that will really affect Bloomington in coming years are Finelight’s proposal for a new headquarters downtown.  Finelight is requesting that the city help provide parking for it’s employees, claiming that parking downtown is scarce.  A local group conducted a study questioning perceptions of parking scarcity downtown and this study has become central in the debate around Finelight’s plans.  I’ve also been paying attention to bike issues and the proposal for the B-Line bike path on the old railroad grade that runs north/south through Bloomington.  Tonight on WFHB’s interchange, they had guests from Bloomington Transportation Options for People, the group that conducted the parking study as well as a transportation planner from Portland, Oregon.

Two new strategies or tools regarding shared use of roads that I had never heard of: “bicycle boulevards” and “sharrows”.

Link to WFHB’s programming archive where this episode of interchange should be available for download soon.

Agencies say proposed NAP changes will harm four local agencies

From today’s Herald Times:

Agencies say proposed NAP changes will harm four local agencies

H-T Report
December 26, 2006

A 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.”

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 .

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.

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

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

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.

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