September 2018 Newsletter

Friends,
 
This month let’s talk births and budgets.
 
We’ve seen a couple of high-profile memorial services in the past week, celebrating long lives in the public eye. Births are typically less noted – full of potential rather than accomplishments. The future rather than the past.
 
Our Bloomington community averages three or four births a day. New residents who count on all of us to help them thrive in our city and world, into the 22nd century!
 
Budgets are about the future too, laying out our collective priorities. We’ve outlined for the city council about $160 million in proposed 2019 investments and spending (details available here).

The following are some of the new ways we’re proposing to invest in our children – our future:

• Youth Participatory Budgeting – this program, borrowed from Boston, brings high school age kids into city government, dedicating some money for them to decide how to invest and creating early experiences in our democracy.

• Pre-K Support – for the second year in a row, we’re proposing $100,000 in city funds to support healthier and better starts for some of our youngest residents (while the state dithers).

• Sustainability Planning – we have a 2018 Sustainability Plan for our community, and next year we’ll develop our first ever community-wide climate change assessment, to do our part to respond to this generational challenge (while Washington dithers).

• Social Worker at Police Department –often we ask police officers to respond to family breakdowns or social stressors; for the first time ever, we’re proposing a full-time social worker join our police to serve our community, to help more kids get better starts.

• Rehab of Public Housing – hundreds of kids in our community live in public housing, many in 50-year-old buildings in great need of repair. Our Housing Authority is planning a new program to rehab all 312 units within the next six years instead of the 26-year pace we were on when I took office.

• Switchyard Park – creating great parks is a fundamental way we invest in our kids and our future. This new biggest-ever investment in a public park will mean future generations will enjoy a greener, healthier, better Bloomington.

• Finally, a monumental challenge facing our children and families today is the rising pressure of substance use disorder. All levels of government and civil society must collaborate, as we increase Jack Hopkins funding for nonprofits, encourage more volunteers at CASA, and more.

Budgets address many things. These are just a few new goals for 2019 that particularly invest in our kids, remembering that every day another few young residents join our community, looking to us to make the right choices for their future. Let’s keep making Bloomington shine brighter for all. 

Democratically Yours,
John

Ps: THE PICNIC IS HERE!! Remember to join Dawn and me and hundreds of Democrats this Sunday, Sept 9th from 4 to 7pm, for the fourth annual Hamilton Family Picnic at Bryan Park. Sen. Joe Donnelly, our next Congresswoman Liz Watson, and many more local and state candidates on hand. Enjoy music and food for political momentum building for the upcoming critical mid-term elections.

August 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

A moment for science. And reason. So much of our modern world is built on our capacity for and commitment to reason. 

So how should we react when FACTS are attacked, when UNIVERSITIES are disparaged, when the PRESS is called the enemy, and when SCIENCE itself seems under siege? (Or, as Politico put it recently, when “Climate change skeptics run the Trump administration”?)

At the national level, a joint attack on reason/facts and on the press is ominous. TheNew York Times summarized this recently:

• Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science adviser, a position created during World War II to guide the Oval Office on technical matters ranging from nuclear warfare to global pandemics.

• No chief scientist serves at the State Department or at the Department of Agriculture

• Both the Interior Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have disbanded climate science advisory committees.

• The Food and Drug Administration disbanded its Food Advisory Committee, which provided guidance on food safety.

• EPA is a world in itself, with radical limits on what types of scientific research can be used and what scientists can serve on committees.

• And President Trump himself outrageously declared the press “the enemy of the people” (a phrase famously used by Stalin and Mao), and fuels mob responses at his rallies and through his tweets.

I would encourage two things:

First, support scientists, researchers, and journalists whenever you can. Being pilloried can wear people down, and letting those under siege know that we stand with them is important. Join local groups and write letters and speak up, in their support. Our country and community and planet depend on them (and us).

Second, locally, let’s keep our commitment to reason, using data and transparency to help address our challenges. Governments belong to the people, and so should embody our commitment to facts and science in what we do locally, welcoming research, study, dialogue, and experimentation. It’s not always easy or clear, but it’s important we embrace these values regularly in our work.

We know we need empathy along with reason, to make things work. And we need to remember that sometimes opponents seek to foment divisions and aggravate differences, discouraging us from emphasizing our common purpose to work together on the big challenges we face.

Keep working together, bringing ideas and suggestions and reactions and reforms, based in reason and steeped in empathy.

Democratically Yours,
John

PS: Remember to hold Sunday afternoon, 4pm-7pm, September 9th for the fourth annual Hamilton Family Picnic at Bryan Park, with local, state and federal candidates, music and food for political momentum building for the critical mid-term elections coming up. And remember to help get everyone registered to vote for this November!!

PPS: I can’t help quoting a powerful paragraph from an extraordinary article about climate change in The New York Times on Aug 5th; read it and ponder:

"The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.

Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?"

July 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

We just had a pretty special 24 hours in Bloomington, with our annual boisterous July 4th parade and what we hope will become new traditions of downtown fireworks and accompanying street parties. The downtown twice filled with 1,000s of residents and visitors celebrating community and history.

We honored 200 years of Bloomington’s and 242 years of America’s stories. But even during those happy events, I worried about our next decades – how will those stories be written?

And how so much of that comes down to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When Justice Kennedy announced his imminent retirement, it put in motion the threat of a radical five-vote Court that would dramatically change America, by:

• striking down the Affordable Care Act and other efforts by Congress to fix health care, economic inequality, and other vital national challenges

• affirming overwhelming and secret corporate money in politics

• locking in outrageous gerrymandering to lock out democratic vote results

• denying the most fundamental rights to women, LGBTQ+, immigrants, and others

• perpetuating racial inequality and discrimination

• destroying working people’s rights to organize and favoring the wealthy and powerful corporate interests

• limiting our abilities to respond to climate change and protect our planet

• blocking access to justice to those who have suffered wrongs by powerful interests

• insulating authoritarian, unlawful, and anti-democratic presidential actions from meaningful checks

President Trump with Senate Republicans can change the course of our future in these and other radically harmful ways. That’s the same Trump who lost the popular vote by millions, who is under investigation for colluding with a foreign enemy to win the election (as Senate Republicans affirmed this week that Russia secretly worked to help put him in office), and who regularly demeans our Republic with his bigotry and lack of character.

We should take inspiration from history: Justice Kennedy served on the Court only because progressives stopped Reagan’s ultra-conservative Robert Bork from taking that seat in 1987. Instead, swing-vote Kennedy was the deciding vote to reaffirm Roe v. Wade and to guarantee marriage equality.

Thirty-one years later, we have to do it again. It’s harder because we don’t control the Senate, but the stakes are as high or higher.

I believe the national Republican Party – which sees a more progressive, diverse country coming, demanding more justice and opportunity for all – is seeking to disempower the American people in our efforts to move our country forward. And the Supreme Court is ground zero for that struggle.

With everything on the line, we all need to act. Now. Our own Senator Donnelly, facing a tough reelection, is one of a key handful of votes that can direct the course of our country’s next decades. He needs to hear from us all. Regularly. Strongly. He needs our support, and we need his on this critical issue. Our next generations depend on it, so that future celebrations of the 4th of July still honor a land of liberty and justice for all.

Democratically Yours,
John

P.S. Remember to hold Sunday afternoon, September 9th for the fourth annual Hamilton Family Picnic at Bryan Park, with local, state and federal candidates, music and food for political momentum building for the critical mid-term elections coming up. And remember to help get everyone registered to vote for this November!!
 

June 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

Last weekend I gathered in Boston with hundreds of mayors from around the country to share ideas, learn from experts, and speak in unity on key issues. How energizing it is, especially in these very challenging times, to see tangible evidence of the resilience of our country and our people!

Because you can tell that, in cities large and small, from coast to coast and in between, tens of millions of people are working every day to increase opportunity and justice in their communities—resisting messages of division and bitterness and bigotry and malaise coming from DC or state capitols.

One day’s topics featured climate change, and many of us energetically reaffirmed our commitment to effective action to protect our planet, contrary to our President’s reckless actions and neglect. Another day, the streets of Boston roared as tens of thousands attending the annual PRIDE parade were joined by mayors from all over the country, as we proudly wore rainbow sashes and marched arm in arm in steadfast support for equality and justice.

The new, young mayor of Stockton, California, challenged everyone with their inspiring experiment with Universal Basic Income, providing $500 per month to some of their poorest families – reminding us that our people are our most precious resources. Why do we tolerate the grinding poverty that erodes so many futures?! (This pilot is funded by philanthropy and will share results in the next 18-24 months.)

And then the visiting mayor of Hiroshima, with great dignity and strength, pleaded that no other city on earth should ever again experience what they suffered 73 years ago. We stood in awe and support (and for some of us, tears). Honolulu and Hiroshima, where WWII began and ended between our countries, became each other’s first Sister City, in the 1950s. The Hiroshima-led Mayors for Peace now numbers more than 7,000 cities around the globe (including Bloomington), reminding us that we share so much in common, contrary to the false claims of so many demagogues and talking heads.

These are challenging times. The midterm elections approach, when we MUST demonstrate clearly what our country stands for. Never can we lose our values or our mutual commitments to each other. From the birthplace of our nation in Boston, to Bloomington, to hundreds of our cities, millions resist dark messages and nourish hope. Persist in hope. Let’s continue to do our part at home, as we’ve done for 200 years, in solidarity with our sisters and brothers around this great, resilient nation.

Democratically Yours,
John

Ps: Mark your calendar: Tuesday evening, July 3rd for downtown fireworks! We’re bringing the celebration back downtown and it should be exciting and fun! Followed the next day, July 4th, by the traditional Bloomington Fourth of July parade. And Sunday afternoon, September 9th for the fourth annual Hamilton Family Picnic at Bryan Park, with our fantastic local, state and federal Democratic candidates, music and food, for political momentum building for the critical mid-term elections coming up.

May 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

Thousands of Bloomingtonians filled Kirkwood Avenue last Sunday the 29th for a Bicentennial Party, making a spectacular scene. We weren’t sure how many would show up for the event – first of its kind – but beautiful weather and bountiful imaginations brought a flood of people enjoying food trucks and art booths and reenactments and music and poetry and more.

It was a reminder that as a community we need to keep trying new things and seeing what fits. For example, this coming weekend welcomes our first “Granfalloon,” a three-day celebration of Hoosier writer Kurt Vonnegut. Check out details here. (Btw spoiler alert – be ready for a new Fourth of July experience! Stay tuned for details....)

And it’s a really important reminder that change happens because people make it happen.

Today is Election Day – an ultimate example of people making change happen. Voters making changes. And candidates putting themselves on the line forchange.

So first – BE SURE TO VOTE!! I know most of you have or will. Just be sure, and tell your friends and family too. It’s the foundation of our democracy, and how we improve things.

And second – HUG A CANDIDATE!! I don’t know how our elections will turn out, but I know EVERY Democratic candidate deserves a hug thanking them for putting themselves on the line and advocating for progressive change. I really mean it, whether a candidate prevails or not, they deserve our thanks and respect for competing and making this big messy democracy better. I promise you, candidates appreciate a sincere hug of thanks after a tough campaign.

So: Vote and Hug! And no doubt many will be doing FAR more than that today for candidates. Thanks for ALL you do, as supporters, volunteers, candidates, advocates.

Democratically Yours,

John

Ps: Consider gathering at Democratic Party Headquarters Election Night to watch returns come in (116 S. Madison Street), or at Liz Watson’s watch party at Nick’s on Kirkwood.

April 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

Spring brings lots of issues to consider in Bloomington: our new “CDFI Friendly City” announcement of an innovative Bloomington model to attract important investments from community development financial institutions in our city and our people; groundbreakings for affordable housing, the new economy of the Trades District and Cook Medical’s major expansion; resolution of the armored vehicle for our community; our city’s 200th birthday on April 11th; and a powerful remembrance of the assassination of Martin Luther King, 50 years ago this month.

In this message, I want to focus on another issue. One that always brings smiles to Dawn and me, and energy and hope for the future. Every two years, we host a fundraiser in our home for the IU College Democrats, to help them have resources to do all the great work they do: registering new voters, hosting debates and forums, training young advocates, organizing volunteers forcountless campaign, building progressive momentum altogether.

We all are asked all the time for contributions to campaigns and causes, and I certainly encourage generous giving. Let me say this about the College Democrats: I think no one does more with a dollar than they do. That is, I guarantee you that your donations really go a long way with these creative, frugal, future-oriented leaders.

So, for this month, I want to encourage you to celebrate the fact that there are so many smart, dedicated, thoughtful, caring, progressive young people in our midst – soon to spread out in the world to make good things happen.

We can boost their efforts. We can accelerate their impact. We can encourage them.

If you’d like to join us, please feel free to come to our house on Tuesday evening, April 24th between 7 and 9pm for a dessert pot-luck fundraiser to support the IU College Democrats. Bring a donation or dessert or both. (You know college students will welcome desserts to take with!) If you can’t join us, consider a donation, of any size, to support the IU College Democrats and our future. You can send it to our home (635 S. Woodlawn Ave, B’Town 47401), made out to the IU College Democrats.

You’ll be energized and inspired by these exceptional young folks. Thanks for all you do too.

Democratically Yours,
John

Ps: Some upcoming city events may interest you:  Wed. April 11th is the actual 200th birthday of Bloomington, and there will be a ceremony at City Hall from 5 to 6:30pm with fun and history; and Friday, April 13th is a public report-out from the Urban Land Institute’s week-long intensive review of potential future uses for the 24-acre current Hospital site, from 9 to 11am, also at City Hall.

March 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

I hope all are well and see the light of spring coming around the corner!

Originally, I planned to write about so many big things ahead of us, items I spoke about at the recent State of the City address. But many of you are no doubt aware of concerns and some protests that have arisen about a planned purchase by the Bloomington Police Department of a replacement armored vehicle, to be used by the Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT), which deals with high-risk dangerous situations involving firearms.

With the Parkland school shooting still raw in our minds, and with the very real concerns about militarization of society, the proliferation of weapons all around us, and frankly the culture of fear that can be abused, I thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts about all of this.

First, let me say how strongly I support and how desperately we need common sense gun control to reduce the terrible, daily loss of life to firearms in our country. I’ve written about it in the past and hope that the courageous young people of Parkland may help lead us to better laws and regulations. America’s unique status of suffering this carnage is inexcusable, and it’s fixable. Much as we would wish otherwise, Bloomington is not immune from this pathology.

Second, as Mayor I have a serious and sober duty to protect public safety in our community, for all of us. That includes working closely with and overseeing our public safety officers of the Police Department. Every day there are people in our community, for all kinds of reasons, who seek to do very harmful things to each other and to us. Our police officers face danger directly and professionally, to protect all of us. We owe them the tools and training for them to do their jobs well. Public safety overall of course is built upon so many factors beyond policing, that demand so much attention and resources. But police are certainly a foundational part of our safety.

Third, I am very mindful of the history in our country of abuse by law enforcement agencies and individuals – policies or actions or interventions that reflect our long history and continuing incidents of racism, sexism, prejudice, or sometimes just terrible judgments. Every community must be sensitive to the use of government power against our residents – ever vigilant against abuse of that power. And ever sensitive to how at times our systems of justice and public safety seem to criminalize poverty or addiction or mental illness. I’m very proud of Bloomington’s recent history on these matters, but it would be false and foolhardy to ignore the need to be aware of the risks, or to ignore the legacies that can still have painful impacts both in reality and perception.

Fourth, as regarding any issue evoking deep concerns and strong views, a public process is important to allow our democratic system to work. That process didn’t start as early as it should have in the case of the armored vehicle – which was talked about back in 2015 before I was mayor, and was included on a five-year capital plans starting in 2016 – but the public wasn’t engaged in discussing the planned purchase until February of this year. We’ve made up time recently with five major public sessions for input and review and discussion, and countless more individual or less formal interactions. Some members of the community have organized protests against the purchase of the replacement vehicle. Other members have stood up to support its acquisition. That is democracy. That is Bloomington. And those discussions will lead to better results for the community.

In the end, my job is to help Bloomington be the best community we can be, for all of us. I and my colleagues in city government will be taking in and reviewing the public comments, as well as the analysis of the need for public safety officers and concerns about procedures and protocols for appropriately responding to high-risk, violent situations in our community. 

Before the end of March, I’ll announce plans for a path forward based on these analyses. The public, and city council, and relevant boards or commission may weigh in on the plans. We all know that no plan would please everyone. I’ll ask in advance that we all respect differences of opinions, and also understand that any plan will reflect and react to a world that is far from perfect, of course, but hopefully can be a step forward toward improving that world for all.

Thanks for all you do for our community, and let’s keep focused on protecting what’s essential and welcoming change that brightens our future.

Democratically Yours,

John

Ps: If you want to learn more about the armored vehicle issue, check out information on the city website. If you’d like to catch up on the content of the annual State of the City address, you can see the written text here and you can watch a recorded version with slides here.

January 2018 Newsletter

Friends,

Happy New Year to all! We so need 2018 to be a better year. And that’s up to us.

Let me say I’m excited about Bloomington’s prospects. We have good things ahead, including an expanding downtown convention center, a big new city park on the south side, an activating tech park on the north side, and, just announced, 24 acres downtown that the city will purchase at a deep discountwhen the hospital moves to a new eastside location. 

Not to mention our largest private employer, Cook, doubling down to invest in Bloomington’s future. And our first “Unicorn” – a young tech company recently sold for a billion dollars (Cook Pharmica sold to Catalent). 

These successes reflect the good efforts of Bloomingtonians and bode well for 2018. I hope you’ll join us on Thursday, February 15 for more discussion about 2018, at the State of the City event (more below).

In 2018 we’ll continue striving to make our community work for everyone, with new affordable housing. More support for people with addictions. More opportunity for entrepreneurs and young workers and families. More support for arts and parks and trails and schools. 

We’re also excited to celebrate our 200th year as a city (and county) in 2018! Besides lots of fun events, we’re committed to planting hundreds of hardwood trees and expanding our network of trails.

I’m keeping my gaze forward, because 2017 was a painful year at the state and national levels. The year began in DC with awful divisiveness and bigotry, unprecedented in my lifetime. When the President described “American carnage” in the inauguration, I winced and I worried. Now I believe those very words could describe the past 12 months of federal activity.

At the state level, funding squeezes erode public school systems. Head-in-the-sand (or -in–the-coal-mine) legislation frustrates solar installations. The state’s outrageous midnight hour overthrow of our annexation process and its prohibition of inclusionary zoning for affordable housing targeted Bloomington directly. 

The year ended with wrenching news as the head of Indiana’s Division of Child Services resigned with a scathing public indictment of how badly our state is treating at-risk kids every day. As the former director of the Family and Social Services Administration, I took that news particularly hard. Our government has many responsibilities, but taking care of children in need is fundamental.We’ve seen the impact of the state’s approach to DCS here in Bloomington. It’s unacceptable. 

So we commit to acting locally, including:

• supporting new child care slots for poor families

• hiring hard-to-employ folks in public projects, to help break negative cycles

• paying at least $15/hour for all regular city employees

• increasing recycling with weekly pickup

• always working to improve housing affordability. 

I’m optimistic about 2018 in Bloomington because I know our people are resilient and determined and caring. Let’s keep at it. 

Democratically Yours,

John

P.S. On Thursday evening, February 15th I’ll host the 2018 State of the City gathering at the Buskirk-Chumley. We’ll enjoy good music and spoken word from some of Bloomington’s creative folk, and I’ll review our status and look ahead to our community’s coming year. Mark your calendar and please join us!!