Campaign email
caldieforcouncil@gmail.com
Elected officials are at their best when they work collaboratively. This means listening to the advice of relevant experts and to the voices of resident stakeholders. It also means working well with elected officials and government employees across the city and county, as issues such as public health, climate change, and so many others can’t be solved by either city or county alone.
Good relationships boil down to trust that everyone is operating in good faith. It takes work to build that trust. I will commit to prioritizing communication, to assuming the good faith effort of all county and city officials and employees, and to focus on our areas of commonality rather than our differences. After all, we’re all in this together.
The typical answer is to offer monthly constituent meetings. However, such meetings are usually difficult for residents to attend. This is especially true for residents who may be busy juggling more than one job alongside family commitments. My goal is to reach as many citizens as I can, particularly those from less represented groups. So, while I would like to engage in constituent meetings – ideally jointly with other elected officials – I will likely prioritize meeting people where they already are. This means finding neighborhood groups, affinity groups, and events where residents meet. I won’t know what strategies work until I try, but I’m excited to learn which methods allow for effective connections with residents. I’m open to ideas.
The biggest immediate financial challenge for Monroe County is the Justice Center, as the current facility can no longer appropriately serve the community. It has long been evident that a new facility is needed, and that Justice Center employees would prefer to remain co-located with the jail and in a downtown location. Once location and design decisions are made, the County Council will need to determine how to fund the building and, if necessary, the purchase of the land. However, new facilities are only one piece of a larger justice puzzle. We must also focus on upstream strategies to address issues contributing to encounters with the justice system. By prioritizing long-term solutions, we can work to reduce the need for incarceration.
Short-term, evidence suggests that a rapid re-housing model can be an effective method. When people have a home, they are better equipped to address the challenges that may have led to their homelessness in the first place, such as unemployment, mental health challenges, or substance use issues. By connecting people with flexible rental assistance and support services within our community, we can improve their chances of staying housed.
Long-term, living here needs to become more affordable. Residents in Monroe County, particularly in low-income and renter-occupied households, are paying too large a percentage of their income on housing. Easing this burden should reduce the likelihood of residents becoming unhoused.
Campaign email
trentdeckardformonroecounty@gmail.com
Educational background
PhD Student in Global Leadership with a Focus on Organizational Behavior and Change
Occupation(s)
Business Communication Faculty, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
I would do what I have always done to maintain city and county relationships: show up positively and energetically, listen, engage, and interact with our partners in local government. I’ve attended numerous meetings with all local officials, ranging from Ellettsville, Bloomington, and Stinesville, on issues consisting of everything from protecting rural transit and drafting interlocal agreements for our forthcoming convention center to addressing health insecurity. I believe with every ounce of my experience working at the federal, state, and local levels of government that elected officials can and should work together. When they do work together alongside community partners, they can get good results for the people they represent.
I strive for access for more residents through a variety of approaches. First, in the last two years, I have served on the Steering Committee of the Monroe County Health Equity Council. This organization provides a platform to bring more voices to the table regarding issues affecting health care, and it does so by reaching into advocacy groups and organizations. It is an offshoot of Community Voices for Health, an initiative from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which engaged multiple voices towards a new way to get policymakers to create local engagement. I have hosted listening sessions alongside my other two at-large county council colleagues at libraries and on Zoom. I plan to continue these activities well into the future.
The demands of county government and the services related to health, infrastructure, roads, and our judicial system constantly grow. In contrast, the county’s revenues face threats. We managed well in past crises such as the pandemic by maintaining strong reserves, but we must take a cautious approach. I helped create a Long Term Finance committee of the council for just this reason. Despite the increased demands of services particularly in heath, the county could see an annual impact of the City of Bloomington’s annexation efforts that removes an amount of $1-3 million in revenues annually. This also comes at a time when we consider the cost of a new facility for our justice center, which we must factor into future decision-making.
Local government and community stakeholders will have to engage on this in a few ways. That work is underway. I believe we need to continue investments into the existing Heading Home plan that Monroe County supports. This plan identifies a range of solutions, from fundamental infrastructure investments to data sharing, with a priority of a housing-first model to alleviate the crisis. More can be gleaned from https://headinghomeindiana.org/the-plan/. We can also increase housing stock for low-income households, help landlords with incentives for affordable housing, and expand the health care and income opportunities for those experiencing housing insecurity. This requires buy-in from everyone participating.
Campaign email
info@votedavidhenry.com
Educational background
MPA, Local Government Administration, Indiana University. BA, Baldwin Wallace University
Occupation(s)
Government Management Consultant, Teaching Faculty - IU O'Neill School of Public and Enviornmental Affairs
Frankly, we haven't had the best interpersonal communication in recent years among officials. I believe this is in part to how isolating some technology is in building interpersonal relationships. While public business must be conducted open-door, we need leadership that can have a coffee together and build up personal rapport. I can contribute that approach. As a trained meeting facilitator, I've led consensus-building workshops in my past consulting work. As the most recent chair of the Democratic Party, I have a good working rapport with all of our elected officials (and some Republicans too) and relationships that carries with it the trust and goodwill to help continue to bridge relationships among city and county officials.
There is no reason the first time someone speaks at public comment is the first time a citizen should meet their Councilperson. Every time we can educate people on how government works is time well spent. Election day is only the beginning and not the end of community engagement. We need far more listening opportunities for one another. I'll focus on town hall meetings and putting "council on your corner" events far afield from the courthouse. Social media, old fashioned phone calls and digital events are only part of the puzzle - being in the community means being in the community. That also means doing the work to keep going to places elected officials only visit at campaign time - from community organizations to union halls.
We are on borrowed time to assure a quality of life and economy our whole community can enjoy. We are constrained by state law on how much revenue our community can take in. Our economic base and property tax revenue struggles to meet our basic obligations - like a constitutional jail and criminal justice system or repairing county roads and culverts. It is basic math - we either foster economic development and more housing choices to share the tax burden, or, fewer people will carry more of the burden with declining services. We simply must move forward with economic and sustainable housing possibilities to deliver services, living wages and benefits for county employees, resilience to a changing climate, and for overall quality of life.
As a member of the now defunct Affordable Housing Advisory Commission, we made recommendations to make "housing a human right" a reality that are still not implemented. We can, with smart use of the ARPA funds that remain, build emergency housing, sanitation, and support the NGOs that already lead on this issue. We should treat the challenges the unhoused face as the disaster it is - no differently than a tornado displacing those with houses. I'd like to see us fund our values and put our money where our mouth is, if you will, on putting the rungs back on the housing security ladder. With much more urgency, we need to roll back 20 years of inflationary & mental health challenges, that more of our neighbors experiencing homelessness face.
Campaign email
CherylMunson2012@gmail.com
Educational background
BA, Anthropology, Geology, University of Arizona, 1965; MA, Anthropology, Archaeology, University of Illinois, 1971
Occupation(s)
archaeologist
The last decade has seen more confrontation than collaboration between our city and county. For example, the expansion of the Convention Center was stalled for several years due to disagreements between the elected city and county executives. But in smaller ways, city-county collaboration has been successful for years, e.g., Animal Control and Building Inspections. Having a shared goal and a willingness to compromise is fundamental to successful collaboration. Our city and county would benefit from another “joint” endeavor. I would suggest a good start would be a City-County Childcare Task Force to identify possible solutions for our local government employees whose struggles to find affordable childcare impact their lives and work.
While constituent meetings proved to be an unsuccessful way to communicate with anyone but a small number of people, I have had the good fortune to know and work with people who reside in various parts of the city and county. Also, the opportunity to talk with diverse citizens arises when I am working on boards, committees, or just lending a helping hand at various events (e.g., historic preservation, reorganization of fire protection in the county, annexation discussions, History Center Garage Sale, the County Fair, Indian Creek Easter Egg Hunt, Ellettsville’s Fall Festival, Harrodsburg Heritage Days, Lotus in the Park, etc.). Spending time working with community members gives me a chance to hear people’s concerns about a host of issues.
Replacing the current inadequate and physically failing jail with a new facility within which incarceration will be part of a “Justice Center Complex” that will ideally incorporate treatment services for mental health and substance use disorders. Additionally space will be needed for the Sheriff, Prosecutor, Public Defender, the Circuit Court, and Probation Services. Paying for the Justice Center will require considering the best mix of funding sources,-- bonds, revised allocations of existing tax revenues, grants, and other funds. The possibility of a “jail tax” to help fund the Justice Center’s construction and operations should be evaluated as well in finding the lowest overall cost.
Those places having fewer obvious homelessness issues reportedly encourage unhoused people to move to other cities, including our own. Instead of transporting the homeless away, Bloomington and Monroe County have favored providing housing along with supportive services. Winter conditions stress both housing and other basic needs because many people still live in scattered tent camps. While public and private funding is directed to support new construction projects to provide additional long-term housing and services, I doubt that we can build enough to solve the issue. I think we should fully explore additional alternatives, e.g., the pros and cons of organized tent encampments or neighborhoods of “tiny houses” centered around services.
