In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson addresses homelessness, redistricting and other issues. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU. Here are some highlights.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: We're hearing from Governor Braun that redistricting in Indiana is on the table hinting at a special session in November. He also hinted to other things that need addressed. How do you feel about redistricting? And what are you hoping that the state legislature will address if they meet?
Thomson: I think redistricting, in the sense that we're looking at it right now, is not necessary, and is likely to be heavily slanted. I think we have gone far enough with redistricting to district our way into districts that are really slanted towards one party.
I think if we really want to do something for the democratic process, we really need to work on voter engagement, and that includes education, and ensuring that people know who's running and what the different offices are and when they're up for elections.
When I go to door to door right now, I have a lot of people tell me that they don't vote anymore because they don't think that who's in office makes a difference. So if you want to actually impact what we have going on in our government, we actually need to speak more to the people who are eligible to vote, not keep playing games with districts.
Hren: We just did a report on businesses frustrated by the slow progress of addressing homelessness. One quote struck me from Eric Spoonmore, president of the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, saying "what I'm hearing from my membership is that things are not improving. This is at a time when we have more local resources than ever being committed towards street homelessness." So what's working? What isn't working?
Thomson: There's several things that are working. We have some shelter providers who are doing a great job getting people sheltered. We also have rapid rehousing and coordinated entry happening, as well as really trying to keep people housed that are currently housed, and so making sure that we're doing eviction prevention, etc.
Once people are living on the streets, it becomes even more difficult to house them permanently and what we're seeing is actually not an increase in numbers, as far as our data tells us, but instead, we're seeing stagnant numbers, even though we're housing people, which means people are coming here from out of town.
Read more: Terre Haute finds 40 homeless people came from outside city
We have met the people who are coming from out of town, and if we want to solve homelessness, we really need to be able to solve it one person at a time in a coordinated way, and that means putting a stop to having people think Bloomington is the place to come for services.
The other thing that's working is enforcement. We have arrested some top line dealers. We're very serious about enforcing our drug laws and enforcing our city codes. We have police down on Kirkwood and increased presence on the B-Line. We have our downtown Resource Officers stepping up their outreach to people who are in crisis.
Those things are working, but we all we need to ensure that we put into place a system which means providers and government working all in a coordinated way, and so we need nonprofits, county government, prosecutor, everyone working towards a safety net that actually works for all of us.
Hren: Would that be the portion of the question, what's not working are people not working together?
Thomson: I think that there are some high-level disagreements about what to do about people coming from out of town, it's our criminal justice system can only take care of so much of the problem, and so, for instance, people get arrested and they'll be out the next day. We need longer term solutions that actually help people who are in mental health crisis. And by that, I mean also substance use crisis, because substance use disorder is a mental health disorder.
Hren: What do you think is the message when people hear that the city is saying, don't bring people experiencing homelessness here, it sounds like the message is, we don't want to help.
Thomson: Well, we do want to help, and we have to be able to actually help. So it's a false promise to say that we have enough resources for the entire state in Bloomington. Instead, what we want is for people to get the help they need in their home community. There are 126 operational homeless shelters outside of Indianapolis and Bloomington in the state of Indiana. That's more than one per county on average.
What we know is that when you are not dislocated from your family of origin or your friend group, then you are more likely to get back to the system that actually will help you. You may need to be in a temporary shelter, but then you can lean on mom and dad or brother or sister for patching together the rest of the resources while permanent housing is getting you up on your feet.
Hren: You just mentioned earlier about talking to residents. I didn't know that you were out canvassing neighborhoods. I'm just curious, what are you hearing?
Thomson: Every month, we pick a different neighborhood to go out and just knock doors, and we really are just there to listen, to hear what people love about the city, what challenges they're experiencing, and how we can help.
Only a very small set of people will come to a public meeting or email or call the mayor's office, so we just meet people on their front porches and hear what's going on.
We hear a lot about homelessness right now. People are seeing the effects of unsheltered homelessness, so they're talking about that, we hear a lot about how awesome our parks are, and especially the programming in the parks.
Every neighborhood we are in, we hear stories about how neighbors are connecting and building small community within their neighborhoods. And that's very Bloomington, and I love hearing about it.
Hren: We did have two emails come in. One is the city used to have a Deer Task Force. What has become of it? It seems like there are more deer and they are bold. What is the city's plan?
Thomson: There used to be what was actually called an Urban Deer Task Force. It was during the Kruzan administration, so that means it was at least 10 years ago now, and it was meant to deal with urban deer. That topic was so controversial, the only thing they could decide to do was culls at Lake Griffey. And so that does happen.
There's no fantastic solution that everyone's going to agree to. And so, the Urban Deer Task Force did its work, and we continue to carry forward with the solution that was provided.
Hren: The Wayfinder signs are getting old, rusty, and might need updated information. Who oversees that?
Thomson: Most of the Wayfinder signs are put together by our public works department, and we will be updating some of those, but we are in the middle of a branding initiative, and so we're not going to print signs twice.
All of our budgets are cut so things like somewhat aging signs, we want people to be able to get around, yeah, and we want our city to look good, and we have to balance all of our expenses.
Hren: Where are you in that rebranding process?
Thomson: We are just getting the raw data back from the branding process, and then we have a steering committee working on it, so we've done lots of focus groups, etc., gotten the public input, and now they'll be developing strategy in the next few months.
