Tag Archives: 2023 election

A New Year, A New Focus: Bloomington vs. Its Neighborhoods

It’s official: Kerry Thomson will be Bloomington’s Mayor in January 2024. We get a new cast of characters in the serio-comic spectacle that is our City Council. John Hamilton will leave City Hall without having consummated his hostile takeover of the suburbs, closed the road through Lower Cascades Park or erected his aluminum cutta atContinue reading “A New Year, A New Focus: Bloomington vs. Its Neighborhoods”

Kerry Thomson: On the Record

I haven’t shared this material before, but Thomson’s victory in the primary makes it germane. These are her positions on policy issues as of early March. Those positions may have evolved since then, but they were provided on the record and evidence a fair amount of research and introspection. Even if there is no actual general election for mayor — if no Republican or independent challenger emerges — these are important perspectives to have on the individual who, we presume, will lead the next Bloomington administration.

Hamilton and his planners propose to take another shot at densification this year

The winner of the 2023 Democratic Primary, and the runner-up, both publicly opposed further densification of the core. Tweaking the UDO, again, to push his poorly rationalized agenda to defy the Comprehensive Plan and densify Bloomington’s neighborhoods should not be the prerogative of a lame duck mayor whose handpicked successor came in a weak third.

The 2023 Democratic Primary: Our Closing Argument

For the last 7+ years, the Hamilton Administration and a determined minority on the City Council have pulled Bloomington in the wrong direction. The 2023 citywide election provides Bloomingtonians a real opportunity to put the city on a more realistic and less divisive course – if we seize that opportunity.