The 812

Many local homeowners have...thoughts, about the assessed value of their homes. Some of those thoughts are ...less than charitable, especially when assessments go up dramatically. Today, we talk to the person doing the assessing...she has thoughts, too. Welcome...to The 812.

Our guest today is Judy Sharp. She's been the Monroe County Assessor since 1991, one of the, if not the longest-serving assessor in the state of ...

(This is an encore presentation.) The city has dozens of boards and commissions, to contemplate big local issues and recommend or take action on them. What's it like to be on one...what's it like to chair one? Our guest is Dr. Gloria Howell. We learn about what the Dr. Martin Luthe King Jr. Birthday Celebration Commission does -- and it's more than just hosting the annual event in its name -- and what a city commissi...

If your human rights have been violated in Bloomington or Monroe County, you have recourse. Our guest today is Ryne Shadday, chair of the city/county Human Rights Commission. (He's also chair of the Traffic Commission, but we'll leave that for another day.) He’ll talk about one of the oldest commissions in Bloomington, one with a proud history of standing up for those unfairly discriminated against, and how they go about ...

Our first two excerpts are from interviews with members of the Monroe County Council. We get thoughts about the problems with the county jail and developing a new so-called justice system in the county from at-large member Cheryl Munson and District 4 member Jennifer Crossley. In the second half, we welcomed back at-large  Bloomington city councilmember Matt Flaherty to discuss the need for a version 2.0 of the city's Climate ...

Our guest today is Jennifer Crossley. She's been the 4th District representative to the Monroe County Council since December 2021, when she was elected in a Democratic Party caucus to replace Eric Spoonmore, who resigned to become president of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. When she took office, she resigned her position as chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party. She won election to her seat in 2022. She als...

Steve Volan passes the gavel and his hosting duties to at large councilmember Isak Asare, who was not satisfied with his first appearance on this show, and insisted -- insisted! -- on grilling your humble interlocutor about his time on city council. If you heard that  original interview, or you've met the man in person, the force of his charm and irrepressible wit rendered Steve helpless to object. 

And so, we're...

Matt Flaherty is an at-large member of the Bloomington City Council in his second term. One of his strongest concerns as a candidate and officeholder is climate change. He's been an avid participant in the discussions about local responses to climate change, and a close reader of the city's Climate Action Plan. We invited him back to discuss and review the Plan -- has it has the desired impact? Is it going to? We talk cli...

On today’s digest, a current-events discussion, the county judicial system, and more about the campus in our city’s midst:

• Lucas Gonzalez, on the big issues he’s been covering for WFIU News; 
• Judge Catherine Stafford on how the county’s circuit court works;
• Judge Stafford from another episode,  on how the Eviction Protection Project has improved outcomes in the county; and 
• another excerpt from Steve Volan's Doppelganger Citie...

Today we explore why evictions are the whole community’s problem (hint: guess how many people currently experiencing homelessness lost their rented apartments?). We talk about it with Judge Catherine Stafford, one of two judges who handle evictions cases locally, and who  was on the show yesterday to talk about the county judicial system in general. She talks with Steve Volan about the degree to which those evicted are students in ...

This show started by exploring Bloomington city government. But you're swimming in layers of local government. Recently we've expanded our scope to the other layers of government, like townships and the county council. This episode is our first crack at understanding the local judicial system. 

Our guest today is Catherine Stafford. She's one of Monroe County's nine circuit court judges. She explains wh...

Interviews on this show are typically with decision and policy makers in Bloomington and Monroe County. But some people know a lot about the city and can explain the issues well, who may never have been elected or appointed officials. This is the latest entry in our occasional series that we call The 812 Work Session.

Today's Work Session guest is Lucas Gonzalez, the city government reporter for WFIU News. He talks wi...

This episode is the second excerpt from a public talk Steve Volan gave last fall at the Collins Living-Learning Center in Bloomington, called "Doppelgänger Cities: A History of Campuses." The first excerpt was Episode 29 of The 812, posted February 23.

As you may know, Steve was a member of the city council here for the last 20 years, in a district that was almost entirely students at IU. After redistricting, mor...

Excerpts from recent interviews include county council at-large member and president Trent Deckard talks about leadership; county councilmember (D-2) Kate Wiltz talks about budgeting and the depth of county services; and Drew Bratton and Steve Versaw, board president and executive director (respectively) of BCT Management, Inc., the non-profit that runs the Buskirk-Chumley, the city's premier theatre.

The 812 is a production of...

Is a leader born or made? Is it nature... or nurture? This show won't answer that question definitively...but if anyone can answer that question, it's our guest today. Trent Deckard is the second of the three at-large members of the Monroe County Council to appear on the show, and this year is the council's president. He talks about running for office, current issues facing it, and leading the council. But he's ...

Shakespeare needed his Globe Theatre; Bloomington needs its Buskirk-Chumley. The former Indiana Theatre is more than a century old, has been a publicly-owned 600-seat venue since the 1990s, and is still an eye-catching downtown landmark. How it got to be that way -- and how it survives -- are our topics today. Our guests are Steve Versaw and Drew Bratton, the executive director and the president of the board of directors, respectiv...

New to town, maybe? You deserve a gentle intro to the breadth of local governments. Note that we use the plural: this show is beginning to dig deeper into offices other than just within the city of Bloomington. 

Today's episode is a good cross-section of what different local governments do. Along with a long-sought-after interview with city councilmember Dave Rollo, we venture beyond city limits to interview county co...

Townships are subdivisions of counties. Townships aren't much of a deal in most of the rest of the country, but it turns out that, in Indiana, they're still kind of a big deal. Monroe County is divided into 11 townships. Except for a couple of thousand people in Van Buren Township, and a couple of dozen in Richland Township, the 80,000-plus residents of the city of Bloomington are split almost evenly between Bloomington a...