Part of the reason I haven’t posted in almost a year was that I wanted to leave Blogger. But I wasn’t too familiar with better options. So not only did I stay, I sorta gave up. It happens.
Now I’m trying WordPress out for size. It’s time to start writing again.
The Bloomington City Council meets weekly, on Wednesday nights at 7:30. While these meetings are always open to the public as a matter of course, how one gets to participate depends on what week of the month it is.
Regular-strength and concentrated
That’s because there are two kinds of Council meetings. The difference between them is obscure, but important and deserving of explication.
Regular meetings of the council are the first and third Wednesdays of the month. The main thing that happens at regular meetings is legislation. A bill gets introduced at a regular meeting (what we technically call “First Reading”) and eventually gets a final vote, up or down (what we call “Second Reading”) at a later regular meeting.
In between First and Second Readings, a bill gets considered in a Committee of the Whole. Committees of the Whole are held on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month, for the sole purpose of previewing the case for a given piece of legislation. Everyone interested gets to hear what initial questions and concerns the council has about the bill, members of the public get to speak about the topic, and councilmembers get to debate the issue. Then the council makes a non-binding vote of recommendation as to whether on Second Reading (i.e., in a regular meeting) the council should formally make the bill into an ordinance.
Okay, so that’s the legislative cycle in a nutshell. Now the question is, when do all those other things that happen at council meetings happen? Answer: not during committees of the whole.
The pomp and circumstance
The Council allots time only at the beginning and end of Regular meetings for the public to speak on any item not already on that evening’s agenda. Councilmembers, too, get to speak their mind on any topic only during Regular meetings. It’s only during Regular meetings that the Council hears reports from boards, commissions, and various offices in the administration up to and including the mayor himself. It’s only during Regular meetings that the Council can vote on nominees to council-appointed seats on various city commissions.
During Committees of the Whole, there’s no comment allowed from the public except on the items on that night’s agenda. There’s no extraneous councilmember comments, either (theoretically). No boards and commissions. No mayor’s report. No other pomp and circumstance.
Fifth Wednesdays and Other Cities
And if there’s a fifth Wednesday in the month? The council takes a break, much anticipated by all (including — especially — councilmembers themselves).
Is Bloomington unusual in the way it handles its legislation? Not particularly. Fort Wayne meets like we do, only their “regular meetings” are on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays and their “committees of the whole” on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Maybe we’re unusual for our smaller size, but Bloomington and Fort Wayne are both second-class cities.
Speaking of second-class, on the other hand, there’s Lafayette: same size as us, but meets only twice a month, with their “caucus” meeting coming five days before their regular meeting. That sure would be nice, to only be worrying about city issues one week out of the month.
Maybe they’re just a bunch of slackers in Lafayette. Maybe not enough happens there to warrant more meetings. (Maybe someone from there will take this bait and notify me so I can stop casting aspersions on their good name. Although it’s so easy…so tempting. Nothing like intrastate rivalry.)
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Yes, it’s true: I entered the Council Chambers after last week’s meeting began, and took my seat as an elected member of that august body…clad head-to-toe in a chicken suit, which I wore the entire meeting.
The photo’s caption: “Chicken Little? In observance of the Bloomington City Council‚Äôs discussion on an urban chicken ordinance, council member Steve Volan came to Wednesday evening‚Äôs meeting dressed as a chicken. Volan waited until the meeting started to make his appearance. City council member David Sabbagh looks on. Chris Howell | Herald-Times”
Many people have been asking questions or making comments about the incident. Forthwith are some answers and responses.
1. Why’d you do it?
The October 25 meeting of the Bloomington Common Council was a committee-of-the-whole whose sole agenda item was to consider proposed ordinance 06-21: “To Permit Small Flocks of Chickens by Waiver.” So the suit could certainly be considered relevant.
In a letter to the editor of the local paper of record, the Bloomington Herald-Times, on Friday, October 27 I wrote:
Thank you for covering the urban chickens ordinance so prominently in Thursday’s paper. I’ve always wanted to be able to claim a “pullet surprise.”
Of course I wore the chicken getup to endorse the keeping of chickens within city limits. The HT story did not make clear, however, the other reasons why I dressed up for the meeting.
The previous week, while dining with company at the Uptown, a friend passed my table on his way out. A second later, he came back grinning and declared abruptly: “I’ll donate $500 to the charity of your choice if you go to next week’s council meeting in a chicken suit!” (For the record, I was at that moment dining on polenta.) Having experience as costumed poultry — to promote a Thanksgiving sale a few years ago, I donned a turkey suit — how could I turn down such a challenge?
Since land-use issues are the most significant that the City Council considers, I’ve asked that the Sycamore Land Trust be the beneficiary of the generosity of my friend (who has requested anonymity…and who can blame him?).
Thanks also to Blast Off Balloons for the chicken suit. Yes, their costumes fit even me.
2. Was the chicken suit uncomfortable?
I am very tall, it’s true. But as I said above, the outfit Blast Off Balloons rented me actually fit. It was a little tight, but fortunately I just had to sit there at the meeting. Had I needed to sing and dance, I might have generated another laugh with the sound of ripping cloth.
The red rubber gloves made it hard to type on my laptop, however. That’s the worst part of outfits like that: the gloves.
3. How do you stand on chickens in the city?
Standing on chickens is cruel, even in the county.
With respect to proposed ordinance 06-21, I wouldn’t have worn the outfit if I didn’t agree with the proposal. My mom, who lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece, said that her family was lucky to survive relatively healthy and well-nourished because their family in the modern-day town of Sparta kept a flock of chickens; the eggs were their main source of protein. That made a big impression on me. Seeing as the city has adopted a resolution and created a commission on sustainability, it’s a no-brainer to me that this is one step, however small and clawed, toward more sustainable living.
Furthermore, this ordinance is one of the most restrictive of any in the country regulating the keeping of urban chickens. It doesn’t allow roosters (like moi — you know how us men-hens like to crow), it limits a flock to 5 hens, it’s quite strict about how the hens are to be kept, and it only allows the keeping of hens if all immediately-adjoining neighbors agree to it.
Fears expressed during the meeting were supported by no evidence at the meeting: fear of health specters like avian flu, fear of noise, fear of the mess chickens might make. I said during the meeting that we’ve been living in fear here in America long enough; we should not turn down this proposal simply because of unfounded fears. (Even though roosters are not allowed, I wouldn’t object to them either. I’d just as soon hear a rooster crow every day at dawn instead of a noisy garbage truck rumbling over the sidewalk and BWEEP-BWEEP-BWEEPing right outside my window.)
4. You made the front page! What did you think of the HT’s coverage?
The story made the front page of the Thursday, Oct. 26 edition of the HT, my chartreuse-fur-clad head and shoulders clearly above the fold (“Fowl get fair hearing” [$ubsc req'd]). It was perfunctory, though it at least indulged itself like the Council did in making its share of chicken jokes — no one at the meeting thought to call me “Chicken Little,” for example.
The HT editorial board, on the other hand, was a bit too eager later to criticize the outfit. Its Friday mini-editorial on the subject ($500 is not chicken feed [$ubsc req'd]) showed a lack of self-awareness unbecoming of a paper of record:
The sight of city council member Steve Volan in a full-sized chicken suit Wednesday was something to behold. But what should we think? Even though the costumed appearance accompanied a discussion of allowing chickens to be kept by city residents, our first thought was that really devalues the serious process of serious government. Humor has a place, but this didn’t seem to be it.¬†
But we’ve revised our position based on the very impressive fact that Volan dressed that way because one of his friends said he’d donate $500 to the council member’s favorite charity if he did. Volan took the challenge; the Sycamore Land Trust has an extra 500 bucks; and government perked on. If $500 is the reward, we’d favor a chicken suit for every council member.
It so happens that I said very clearly during the meeting that I had dressed up as a chicken because of a charitable challenge. At least one other Council member acknowledged this in his public comments. While this was near the end of the meeting, the HT reporter was there the whole time. She neglected to mention this mitigating factor in the story.
Had I not sent the above letter to the editor the next day, reiterating my biggest reason for the stunt, the HT editorial would likely have only been negative — thanks to their own inadequacies at gathering news.
I have previously criticized the relationship between the HT’s newsroom and its editorial board (”Is the Council nit-picking, or is the HT cherry-picking?” 2006.01.21 [$ubsc req'd]). Yet I remain, their humble subject, willing as ever to help them sell papers.
Next time, though, I’m also calling the IDS.
5. But wasn’t wearing a chicken suit inappropriate?
Like I’ve said above, I support the ordinance, it was for charity, and there was no other item on the agenda (I would probably have changed to civvies had there been one). It was also the last Wednesday before Halloween, so it’s not like it’s not the time of year. And the Council has been making chicken jokes relentlessly, both in public and behind the scenes, whenever the spectre of an urban-chickens ordinance has come up.
If anything, the message of the chicken suit is: we have nothing to fear but fear itself. If a politician can wear a chicken suit in public without fear for his reputation, people can live with a responsibly-kept flock of chickens next door.
6. I saw the story in Hartford! Did you know that you’re making national news?
The Indianapolis Star picked up the story (“Bloomington official goes chicken over coop measure”), including a second shot taken by the fine photographer Chris Howell. Several papers around the country picked the story up off the wire, including the Arizona Republic (“Councilman dresses up as chicken for debate”), the Raleigh News and Observer (“Chicken in the chamber”), and the Canton Repository.
FOX News also had a chicken run (“This Just in From the Fun With Fowl Department”), and the guy who initially challenged me saw it on CNN while on a business trip in Alabama. This story had legs like drumsticks.
7. Who challenged you to wear the chicken suit?
At first he wanted to remain anonymous, but less than a day later, my friend who challenged me said it was okay to release his name. Many thanks to Geoff McKim of Bloomington, and a shout out to his wife Amy Cornell (who I hope isn’t mad at him for the impetuous, impromptu donation; maybe it’ll come out of his school-board campaign fund).
8. So are chickens legal now in the city of Bloomington?
The proposed ordinance will be reconsidered at its second (and final) reading in the Council’s regularly-scheduled meeting tomorrow, Nov. 1. The vote to recommend passage was 5-1 in favor with 3 passes, so I assume it will be law soon enough.
9. Is there video?
Yep, thanks to the good people at Bloomington Community Access Television Services (CATS).You can watch for yourself the October 25, 2006 meeting, which starts about two minutes into the recording. I arrive about three minutes after that.
My final comments run from about 1:26 to just after 1:34, during which, despite being in costume, I manage to make a coherent argument between chicken jokes. But you should check out every councilmember’s comments, which are mostly very thoughtful. (Start with the first comments, ventured by CM Chris Gaal, at 1:23; he cracks the rotten egg of chicken jokes around 1:25.)
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I chaired the July 27th budget meeting, the last of four over four straight nights. There wasn’t a single public comment on any section of the budget, which we have been reviewing one department at a time. Virtually no member of the public attended in person.
I’m surprised. You’ve heard the advice to the inquisitive to “follow the money.” This is where the plan to spend all the city’s money gets decided…and zero people have comments?
Granted, it’s on TV, and our meetings have been webcast since 1999. And granted, there was zero controversy this year between the Mayor and Council, or between the administration and some other person or entity.
But sometimes I think it has to do with something much simpler: the structure of the meeting. As a member of the Council, I have the right to ask unlimited questions during the Council Questions period of any deliberation. Members of the public can only comment during Public Comment; they can’t ask questions.
Since I suspect that that knowledge is a deterrent to some people to attend and/or speak in public, I felt I should say this: if you send me a question on any topic being considered by Council, I’m willing to consider asking it on your behalf.
I reserve the right to not ask it, of course. I won’t ask questions that aren’t relevant to the topic being discussed. And I won’t ask questions that I personally think are irresponsible. (Sorry, you don’t get to argue with me about what “irresponsible” is. You don’t like it? Run for office yourself, and put up with the crap I put up with.)
But if I were no longer an elected official, I would approach a council member and request that they ask reasonable questions for me. I know enough about the members of this body to be assured that I could get them to do so. In short, I would approach them as if I were a member of their body.
The portion of 7th Street just north of the Indiana University Auditorium (just west of Jordan Avenue) has been closed to all traffic for a couple of years now. It is being used as a staging area for construction trailers for new IU buildings.
The closure prevents buses from making shorter trips around campus. It also removes an essential component of the city’s urban grid; there’s one fewer outlet for traffic that piles up around the academic core of the campus. Showalter Fountain is now the centerpiece of a cul-de-sac.
So why doesn’t the City of Bloomington reopen it? Because the state trumps the city: since that section of road is entirely on the IU campus, they were evidently at liberty to do with it what they wanted. I wonder where IU administrators learned to do urban planning? Oh, wait — to plan a city, first they’d have to acknowledge that they were in a city. Our friends on the other side of Indiana Avenue fancy themselves to be the spiritual inheritors of Robert Moses: builders of monumental park-like places, damn the messy consensus of the people around them. All they’re doing instead is building a huge dose of suburban sprawl, in the very center of the fledgling urban place that is Bloomington.
CM Sabbagh (R-District V) and I don’t agree on much, but we agree most vocally on this issue. We think that at the very least the street should be reopened to buses. Maybe it’s time for a council resolution on the matter.
Since the budget process went from five weeknights over two weeks to four straight weeknights over one week, the city budget hearings have coincided with the week of the Monroe County Fair. Monday and Tuesday nights were four hours each, and we thought ourselves lucky to get away after that brief a period. Wednesday night’s meeting was not even two and a half hours — remarkable.
The budget hearings are a chance for council to comment on issues that otherwise might not be discussed in public because there is no pending legislation related to those issues. Each department head has to present their department’s budget separately.
There has been very little controversy over this year’s budget, and there was not much controversy over last year’s budget. Bloomington has been run by a Democratic mayor and council majority since 1972, so that’s perhaps not a surprise.
Until early this morning, other states used to revolve around Indiana. The country changed its clocks twice a year; we didn’t because we were right on the time zone line geographically, and we’re a vertical state. After many years living without Daylight Saving Time, I grew fond of not having to change my clocks.
But no more.
The Bluebird Nightclub is in District VI. It’s perhaps Bloomington’s oldest operating nightclub, established in 1973. Just a couple of hours ago, a friend and I observed the ringing in of this new era in Hoosier history. We chatted in a booth near the front bar, amidst the oblivious revelry of college students out on a Saturday night as a band called “40% Steve” (no relation) played on the main stage in back.
Indiana law requires taverns to stop serving by 3 am. A brand new Indiana law taking effect in 2006 observes daylight saving time, compelling Hoosiers for the first time since the sixties to join most of the rest of the country in changing their clocks twice a year.
But the time change takes place nationwide at 2 am. And there are lots of people and media attention in state for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, who’ll want to party as late as possible. (Another friend of mine, heading to her grandfather’s funeral, couldn’t get a flight out of Indianapolis because of the Final Four this weekend. Go figure. That’s how busy the state’s capital is right now; certainly a lot of people wanting to party on “spring forward” day in “Naptown.”) The governor, correctly sensing a public-relations embarrassment, granted taverns a one-hour reprieve from enforcement of the law.
Ironic that Hoosier Daylight Time should begin in a year that the NCAA Men’s Final Four is in Indianapolis. Basketball almost made its way onto the back of the Indiana quarter. But that’s another tale.
On the wall over the front bar in the Bird is a large electric clock with a very old Pontiac silhouette logo on it. Patrick, the strapping thirty-something manager whom I’ve known for years, told us the clock has been hanging there since the day the Bird opened and has never been changed for daylight saving time. I asked if they were going to start changing it now. He thought about it and said: they hadn’t thought about it.
I think they should put a sign up by it saying, “This clock is on Eastern Standard Time.” Don’t change it, Pat. Put up another clock if you have to right next to it, as if it were a newsroom. Let the old one stay as it is, to remind us of, um, a better time.
District VI is the centermost of Bloomington’s six councilmanic [sic] districts. Below I’ve appended a list of the streets which bound District VI, as well as neighborhoods and IU residence halls within the district.
The boundary runs right down the middle of the street. The Bluebird, for example, is in District VI. The Video Saloon, across Walnut Street, is not. (If you live across the street from District VI, that doesn’t mean I can’t be of assistance to you, but the moral weight of you being my constituent is absent.)
BOUNDARIES OF DISTRICT VI
NEIGHBORHOODS PARTLY OR WHOLLY IN DISTRICT VI
INDIANA UNIVERSITY RESIDENCE HALLS IN DISTRICT VI
Because Bloomington is more than half the population of Monroe County, the city and county governments rival each other in size. City and county government meetings run side by side all the time on Channel 12, the local cable TV channel devoted to government. Both city and county have executive and legislative branches.
As a result, people are always confusing the two. I have on several occasions been mistaken for a member of the county legislative body.
If you want an example of how politics is not necessarily always about political parties, survey any ten county employees and ask them to comment on their counterparts in city government, and vice versa. (You may have to filter out some choice language.)
So how to differentiate the city and county governments?
Let’s start with their bosses. The city’s chief executive is the Mayor. The chief executive body of each county in Indiana is made up of a panel of three people called “Commissioners.”
The city’s highest legislative body is the aforementioned nine-member Council. The county also has a Council, made up of seven members: four represent districts, three represent the whole county at-large.
Everyone serves four-year terms. The mayor is elected at the same time as the city councilmembers, in the year before a presidential election. The county has elections in even-numbered years; they stagger the seats of both Commissioners and Councilmembers so that not everyone is elected at the same time. (I don’t know why we don’t do that in Indiana cities, but that’s state law for ya.)
The biggest difference I see between city and county is that in the city, laws are passed by the Council, but in the county, laws are passed by the Commissioners. Yes, the executive also does legislation. The primary role of the county Council is fiscal: they approve the county’s annual budget, which gives them a lot of influence over policy, but it’s not the same as actually writing and approving laws.
One thing that confuses people is where everyone does their thing. Since Bloomington is the county seat, most county government activities take place within the city limits. The Monroe County Courthouse is smack-dab in the center of the city, and most county offices are downtown just like City Hall. County employees can be found all over downtown Bloomington. (This actually creates a political issue with one of the b?™tes noires of any locality’s politics: parking. I’ll be covering that topic soon enough.)
There’s more to untangle, such as what responsibilities are the county’s and what are the city’s. But this is good for starters.
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Here is the Monroe County Courthouse, the very heart of downtown Bloomington.
 
Bloomington (70,000) is the only “city” in Monroe County (120,000), and the county seat. The next largest population center is Ellettsville (5,000), which is too small to be a city and so is called a “town.” The only other population center incorporated in Monroe County (in other words, measured by the Census) is Stinesville (200).¬†
In 2000, the Census Bureau determined that Greene and Owen Counties are part of the Bloomington metropolitan area, because a significant percentage (I think more than 25%) of residents of those counties commute to work in Bloomington. Thus, the metropolitan area of Bloomington is now somewhere around 180,000. (The city’s government, of course, only has jurisdiction within the city’s limits.)
And yes, the figure on the weathervane top of the Courthouse is a fish. That’s a long story.
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