In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson addresses this 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: What's going on with redistricting? How do you feel about it being canceled despite the governor and president demanding a vote?
Thomson: Listen the redistricting is all a political stunt, and I mean, even Trump said that his motivation in doing it was to try to get two extra Republican seats from the state of Indiana. It is a waste of our time. Good government does not need to waste its time on party politics. We need to be governing the state or the city as the case might.
Maybe the other very disappointing thing is that it's gotten unnecessarily targeted. And we have people calling each other names, calling making false police reports. It's really uncalled for, and the people of the state of Indiana need a government that's just working to make our lives better and to make our systems work.
Hren: I really wanted to get your reaction from what we've learned this past week about Ellettsville merging with Richland Township. There's a lot of steps that have to happen for that to actually go through. I didn't know entities could merge like that. What do you know about this?
Thomson: I want to give credit to the town manager in Ellettsville, Mike Farmer. He did reach out to us and has said, listen, we want this to be a win for everybody, and if the city is not for it, we won't do it. So we're having our first real discussion about it tomorrow. I hope to learn a lot about what Ellettsville's hopes are and what we're trying to do for the good of the community as a whole.
And while I'm the mayor of just the city of Bloomington within city limits, we all are in relationship with one another. And so we need to consider how this growth happens. Make no mistake, a merger like this or annexation, it's all about being able to grow services so that more people can live in a given spot.
Read more: Supreme Court hears Bloomington annexation contract case
Hren: Let's move to the new jail controversy. There's so much it's about. It's a mixture of size, land, location, splitting the jail from the courts, multi-level, one level, economic effect. As mayor, do you feel like you have a seat at the table?
Thomson: I want to be clear, I probably could have had a seat at the table at any time. I have been really trying to stay in my lane. The county owns the jail. It runs the justice system. I have been trying to stay squarely in city business, and so I have not actually requested an official seat at the table that is now being requested of us.
I have had outreach from President Crossley on the jail matter. So I think there's some collaboration ahead. I wouldn't say we're back to square one. Now we, in a lot of senses, know what we don't want, right? I mean, there was a proposal, and it's pretty clear that's not where we're going. And so, advancing anything significant, you have to also know what you don't want in order to refine what you do want. I think it was a prudent step not to approve that project.
Listen to more: What's next for new jail after county council votes down funding?
Hren: I understand it's a county item, but it has a large impact on the city and the city police as well. Do you have a vision that you would like to contribute to this project?
Thomson: My goal really is that we are not over-building the jail. That really communicates that we are expecting to really keep people there a long time, and that we believe that our crime is going to keep increasing. My work now is to work at the at the other end of things, how do we invest in our community? How do we create belonging? How do we create pathways to success for people, so that they are not choosing a criminal pathway, or if they have slid into that, how do we make sure recovery available to them, mental health, recovery, connection, recovery, substance use, recovery, so that they can heal.
Hren: City Council did not move forward with the stadium district. I understand it's for branding, for city purposes of marketing, but it kind of drew the ire of some of the neighborhoods in that area. What's your take on having a stadium district, and would you like to see that brought to city council again?
Thomson: What I think we really need on the north side, and that's the North College Walnut sector, is more business development. Some of them are struggling, some of them are thriving. But we really haven't called folks into belonging in any kind of way. There's a lot of student housing on the east side of College and Walnut, and then on the west side we have much more sort of longer term residential.
I think it's important, depending on where the map ends up getting drawn, if we have a district that people have a voice in that. But the long and short of it is we need a corridor there that really calls people into belonging, and people know what they're going to get, and we can really help support some businesses there.
Hren: We're down to one minute left. So I always like to leave that to you. Do you have any announcements, or anything else that that we should know about?
Thomson: Let me first do a plea for the public. If you haven't heard we are one of the top 10 finalists in the USA Today contest for most beautifully lit squares in the holidays, and it's a voting thing. So once we made it up this high, the public can help us get even higher. So if you treasure the beautifully lit downtown square in Bloomington, please go and vote on USA Today for that.
And then an announcement is that we are getting ready to publish a housing and homelessness report on everything that we've done in the last two years to address challenges with homelessness and opportunities for housing. And so we're really excited. We hope to release that yet this week.
