The 812

If you've just stumbled across The 812 Show, welcome! It's a snapshot of the establishment in Bloomington and Monroe County, Indiana. In our more than 200 episodes, we've tackled issues like housing, transportation, animal welfare, economic development, and tax assessment. We've interviewed elected officials -- everyone from the mayor to the coroner -- we've talked with, appointed officials, members of boards and commissions, members of nonprofits, and then some. Throughout 2024 and 2025, we learned an awful lot from an awful lot of people. We're going on an extended hiatus; more on that in this last mini-episode of Season 4. But we remain proud of our work. Subscriptions have been turned off, but episodes continue to be available on our website at the812show.org, as well as wherever you get podcasts. Thank you for trying our show, and for wanting to learn what makes your community tick -- to hear about the officers, public bodies, processes and organizations that make Bloomington and Monroe County the decent places to live that they are. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

We're still trying to wrap our heads around CDFIs -- community development financial institutions -- and this time we think we've cracked the code. We welcome back John Zody, the executive director of CDFI-Friendly Bloomington. He was last on the show in May 2024; for his followup he's brought along their program coordinator Emma Yoder, to further break down the concept of mission-based lending. CDFIs are not like regular banks; they don't hold people's money. They only loan money to individuals and entities whose projects fulfill their often non-profit missions. Our guests at CDFI-Friendly Bloomington, are a non-profit-lender-wrangling organization, a kind of coordinator for financing for that community project you're so eager to get off the ground. And there's a lot of money out there being offered by mission-based lenders, who are often far from Bloomington -- but our guests also have money direct FROM the city of Bloomington to loan out. All that money wants to be applied to good works to be done here in town. We talk about why banks can be a bottleneck to the physical development of a city despite the wishes it may have expressed in its comprehensive plan. And we talk about borrowers that CDFI-Friendly Bloomington is working with: housing providers like Bloomington Cooperative Living, small businesses, and providers of childcare. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Bloomington has won two Gold Medals for its Parks Department. It's not just because of nice facilities like Switchyard Park or the B-Line Trail. Sure, a city needs to set aside physical places for greenery et al. But land doesn't program itself. Hence the phrase "Parks...AND Recreation." Today we speak with Leslie Brinson, the director of the Recreation Division of the city Parks and Recreation Department. She tells us about the several venues that the division programs, and its many types of programs, including community gardens, concerts, movies, the Fourth of July parade, kids' programs, and the long-running Farmers' Market. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Our Extra Innings segments feature bonus interview material that didn't make it into our regular episodes. We haven't shared these Extra Innings with you yet, and it's about time we did. John Connell, the General Manager of Bloomington Transit, and Shelley Strimaitis, their Planning & Special Projects Manager, were on the show in May 2025 (to talk about new bus service to Ivy Tech and Cook and their new raft of all-electric buses). They stuck around to discuss the several new apps people can use to book rides, track buses and pay fares, as well as their talks with IU Campus Bus and a comparison with Lafayette and Purdue. We also have more of our interview with Elisa Pokral, the community outreach coordinator of the Waste Reduction District of Monroe County, who stuck around after her January interview to discuss WRD services like the Green Business Network, which helps businesses recycle more easily and cost-efficiently; how they help businesses with waste audits; where exactly plastic goes now; how you can get rid of bulky items too big to fit into a trash bag; and the Adopt-A-Road program. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Since 2015, the online magazine The Limestone Post has held a kind of middle ground among Bloomington publications, combining the arts, the outdoors and other lifestyle features with longform investigative journalism. We talk with Dason Anderson, the executive editor, about how the Post works and the challenges it faces in an era of local journalism all but consumed by social media. Their response in 2019 was to switch from a for-profit to a non-profit publication model, which has helped them survive and thrive. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Today is another feast of Extra Innings -- extensions of interviews with past guests that we've never made available before. Two guests who have been involved in art as a public matter also had more to say than we could fit into our regular half-hour interview format. In September 2024, (hear the original interview here) , Holly Warren, the city's assistant director for the arts, talked in Extras about her back history in the arts; her interest in the city going beyond having a public arts plan to developing a cultural plan, and explaining what that is; and the importance of facilities like the John Waldron Arts Center and the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre. Those buildings were also the topic of our conversation in Extra Innings in May 2025 with a predecessor of Warren in the city arts director role, Miah Michaelsen, (hear the original interview here) who now is the director of the Indiana Arts Commission. Michaelsen talked about those buildings that were rededicated to the arts, and the history of the organization that rehabbed them, the Bloomington Area Arts Council, which she directed in the 2000s. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Lately we've been diving into our hoard of Extra Innings interviews with prior guests. Today, two new never-before-heard clips with guests from nonprofit entities between Kirkwood and Sixth Streets whose names begin with "Monroe County." The first two-thirds are devoted to our Extra Inning with Sara Laughlin, who visited in September 2024 to talk about her volunteer work with Teachers' Warehouse. In her Extra Inning she talks about her former job, as director of the Monroe County Public Library system, and the now-open Southwest branch library, which was in the planning stages before her retirement in 2015. She also talks about how the Library gets and manages its funding. The final third of this episode with Megan MacDonald, librarian and Daniel Schlegel, director of the Monroe County History Center. After the main episode they recorded in October 2024 , they stuck around to talk about the effect of the pandemic on the History Center, and how some people think the old Carnegie Library building that they occupy is haunted. Not to mention their run-ins with cryptids (or at least, their overzealous fans). Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

[Charlotte Zietlow passed away Wednesday at the age of 91. She was a pillar of the community who will be greatly missed. This is an encore presentation of our interview with her, recorded in January 2024.] Charlotte Zietlow is well-known in Bloomington and Monroe County for many reasons. This episode focuses her time on the Bloomington City Council in the early 1970s -- the subject of her second book, "1971: How We Won". She talks about how the previous council was unresponsive to public input and concerns, motivating her to run for office. She campaigned on issues like zoning changes and lack of transparency. By 1972, she was one of ten newly elected city officials who had swept all but one incumbent out of office. As the new council president, she led reforms to open up government and increase public participation. The new council addressed a long backlog of issues through committees and initiatives focused on social services, infrastructure, and the environment. After one term, Charlotte decided not to run for reelection when she disagreed with the mayor on an issue, instead running for mayor herself. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

This week we're exploring our archive of extra interview segments that we didn't have room for in the original episodes, segments that we call "Extra Innings". It's new material, never-before aired, that gives further insight into the way decision-makers think. In these Extra Innings segments: David Hittle , the director of the Planning & Transportation Department for the city of Bloomington (originally interviewed in Episode 123 ), focuses on the Transportation portion of his unusual title, the car-centric mentality of the state department of transportation, and the types of thoroughfares that dominated planning and development in the last century that the city is striving to correct. Megan Betz , the CEO and executive director of Mother Hubbard's Cupboard (originally interviewed in Episode 110 ), talks about her background in agriculture that led to her current role trying to reduce food insecurity. She reminisces about, before she was at the Hub, the Bloomington Community Orchard and her experiences there — including the day the Orchard discovered it was the victim of peach thieves — and how it all shifted her focus from individuals to the systems that determine who gets to grow things in our community. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Switchyard Park opened in 2019, during the administration of Mayor John Hamilton. It's a stop on the B-Line Trail, another beloved amenity, which opened in 2009, during the administration of Mayor Mark Kruzan. But those places didn't happen by magic or overnight. They were only made possible by decisions made all the way back in 1998, during the administration of Mayor John Fernandez. Our guest today is Randy Lloyd, who was the city's first director of economic development from 1996 to 2001. He was getting the feel of the city's new position when on his watch occurred the greatest negative event in the history of Bloomington's economy: the cessation of all manufacturing at the 58-year-old RCA television plant in 1998, which at its peak employed 8000 workers. We get into the situation at the time, how the Fernandez administration reacted to the news of the plant closure, how the railroad land right-of-way that had been serving the RCA plant could easily have just disappeared, and how it was preserved for use as a park. [Note: this is a longer episode than usual. We'll resume our normal 30-35 minute shows next week.] Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

We've been focusing on the tenant side of the local housing equation lately. We hosted Student Legal Services a few episodes back; today, we meet their cousins at Indiana Legal Services. Nick Minaudo is a lawyer for the Bloomington branch of ILS, a statewide nonprofit. They handle a wide variety of civil cases, like family law and reentry work. But they handle a lot of cases involving tenants, and their services are not just for IU students. We talk about how they're funded, how to apply for their services, and how they're like public defenders for civil cases. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

There's been a precedent for table-turning on this show, in which the guest interviews the host. (As a former city councilmember, Steve has been interviewed on this very program by the rizz-tastic current at-large councilmember Isak Asare .) Last year the Bloomington city administration and council saw fit to merge the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety, Traffic, and Parking Commissions into a single Transportation Commission, which started meeting this past June. Your host was named to the new Commission; by July, they had elected him chair (mostly because he was the only fool willing to do it). To interview Steve, we asked our recent guest, Shefar Rafiul, host of the government.exe podcast on WFHB's Youth Radio, to be our guest host. He agreed, and we're all enthusiastic about the result. The conversation gets into city transportation policies: everything from sidewalks to the Safe Streets for All Action Plan, with the city's Vision Zero goal of zero traffic fatalities by 2039. And, of course, parking. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

[This is an encore presentation recorded in April. We'll be back with a new episode Thursday.] John Baeten came to town as a visiting assistant professor in IU’s geography department, where he spent time doing, among other things, a reconstruction of maps of Bloomington from the past. That led to his current post as the GIS Coordinator for Monroe County. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems, of which there are many at the county. In fact, it’s hard for any local government to do their jobs these days without some kind of GIS capacity. Baeten talks with us about all sorts of interesting projects on the county’s state-award-winning GIS website, like stitching together aerial images of the county taken in the middle of the 20th century, a project mapping racial covenants in real estate deeds across the county. mapping the prevalence of radon, even mapping ticks for the health department. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Melanie Vehslage works for the Youth Services Bureau, which serves to "reduce negative childhood conditions" in Monroe County. A department of county government, the Bureau also strives to promote what they call "safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments" for local youth, which is part of Vehslage's job as their Prevention Coordinator. She came to the Bureau from the county Health Department, where she worked for 8 years in harm reduction and population health. From her we'll learn about the county's youth shelter, the Safe Place program and how it works, the many counseling programs they run to help teens, parents and organizations alike, the Monroe County Youth Council, and the upcoming Childhood Conditions Summit addressing similar issues on November 13 at the Convention Center. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

The local university enrolls 43,000 students in person but only houses 13,000 of them. The other 30,000, almost all of them tenants, live in the city of Bloomington, a city that is only 80,000, students included. That's where our guest comes in. Stacee Williams is the director of Student Legal Services at IUB. They're a full-service civil law firm that happens to be ensconced within IU, and offers free legal representation and advice to IU students who have to pay the fee for it each semester. In addition to representing students in accident cases and reviewing employment contracts, SLS has seen and litigated it all when it comes to issues between tenants and landlords. It's an eye-opening chat for any tenant in a town dominated by rentals. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Lake Week at The 812 continues with Maggie Sullivan, the Watershed Coordinator for the Friends of Lake Monroe. It's a non-profit organization whose goal is to bring together the many entities that have some responsibility for the reservoir: the Army Corps of Engineers, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Monroe County, and the City of Bloomington Utilities among others -- because none of them are directly related or responsible to each other, and no one is specifically responsible for the quality of the water in the lake. We talk with her about what causes the water to sometimes taste funky; the problems of sediment, agricultural nutrient runoff, and the thousands of septic tanks in the area; and how she works with everyone to collectively protect the watershed. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

It's Lake Week on The 812: we're talking about one of the Bloomington metropolitan area's great glories: its freshwater lakes. Reservoirs, actually. Our subject is not the smallest, Lake Griffy, nor the largest, Lake Monroe, but the one in between, Lake Lemon. Named after former mayor Tom Lemon, it was Bloomington's primary water source for more than a decade. Today we find out all about the Lake Lemon Conservancy District with its manager, Adam Casey, including the history of water in Monroe County, the separate nature of the Conservancy District and how it funds itself, and how it cares for the beloved now-recreational site. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

The Community Kitchen of Monroe County is part of the local safety net for people experiencing food insecurity. While it targets those in need, there are no eligibility requirements to receive a meal there. Vicki Pierce, their executive director for more than 20 years, and Kyla Cox Deckard, their treasurer who's been on their board of directors since 2009, talk about how they differ from other organizations dealing with food insecurity like Mother Hubbard's Cupboard or the Hoosier Hills Food Bank, the scope of the hunger problem in Monroe County, and the logistics of an operation that serves more than 300,000 meals a year. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

There have been cries lately for "viewpoint diversity" in academia, but for years in this college town there's been a student organization actively soliciting viewpoint diversity. Our guest today, Elizabeth Conley, is the president of the IU chapter of BridgeUSA, since 2017 a national organization of students devoted to constructive dialogue on political issues. Their vision is of "a thriving US democracy where leaders and citizens engage in respectful, productive dialogue." We talk about the events BridgeUSA sponsors, including roundtable discussions of current topics at their weekly meetings on campus, how the organization is growing here and nationwide, and the local chapter's reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

When it comes to the housing market, we've had city departments, and we're working on guests who can talk about the demand side of the equation such as advisers for tenants' rights. This week, we're talking with people from the supply side of the housing equation. Mark Figg is a developer who built hundreds of units in Bloomington, in projects large and small. He's been a landlord, and an appraiser. And for a decade he was president of the Monroe County Apartment Association, and a former member of their board. We brought him back to the show to talk about the latest data on number of units in the city, occupancy rates and how both are affecting rents; how hard it is to determine because of the foggy data environment around such numbers; and how the Apartment Association works. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.