Home Ownership – The Dissident Democrat

We Endorse: Susan Sandberg (Mayor)

For mayor of Bloomington, we endorse At Large City Council Member Susan Sandberg.

We Endorse: Lois Sabo-Skelton and Isak Nti Asare (City Council At Large)

For City Council At Large, alongside Andy Ruff, we endorse Lois Sabo-Skelton and Isak Nti Asare.

We Endorse: Ron Smith (City Council District 3)

For the District 3 City Council seat, we endorse Ron Smith for re-election.

It’s On.

We’ll be hearing a lot about Sandberg’s bona fides as the election season gets underway. What matters today is that John Hamilton has a serious, committed primary challenger with a team and an infrastructure forming to conduct a credible campaign. Perhaps now that the ball is officially rolling, candidates with similar objectives will feel comfortable jumping into the races for City Council seats — especially those held by the ideologues who imposed the upzoning on the city.

Homewashing

By Peter Dorfman I learned a new word the other day: “Workwashing.” According to Stowe Boyd, who I consider one of America’s most astute observers of trends in the workplace and the economy, workwashing is a verb meaning: “Providing a plausible and positive cover story by a business or industry to conceal the actual reasoningContinue reading “Homewashing”

Put the Brakes on the Latest Round of Misguided Modernizing

By Lori Hoevener I’ve spent many hours, during these months of the pandemic, walking in Bloomington’s lovely old core neighborhoods near where I reside. I’ve always felt immensely lucky that our small city still has that increasingly rare connection with the past that makes present-day Bloomington such an attractive place to live. The term “core neighborhood”Continue reading “Put the Brakes on the Latest Round of Misguided Modernizing”

Five Straw Man Arguments from Pro-Density Partisans

By Peter Dorfman Astraw man argument is a common form of logical fallacy that crops up in political discourse with depressing regularity. The way it works is this: Person A takes a position or makes a claim. Person B creates a distorted version of the claim (the “straw man”), and then Person B attacks thisContinue reading “Five Straw Man Arguments from Pro-Density Partisans”

Does Bloomington’s Upzoning Push Mirror Democratic Party Ideology?

By Peter Dorfman From the beginning of the 2019 push to urbanize Bloomington’s core neighborhoods via amendment of the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), advocates for multi-plex rental housing have argued that the national Democratic Party backs them up in their push for densification. They haven’t abandoned that claim in 2020. The city’s planning staff haveContinue reading “Does Bloomington’s Upzoning Push Mirror Democratic Party Ideology?”

Two Houses: A Thanksgiving Reflection

By Jean Simonian I like houses. I like everything about planning, building, styling and living in houses. Pre-COVID, when life seemed normal, I liked going to Open Houses – just to look. I used to spend hours as a child building entire neighborhoods out of Legos. I grew up in a house. My parents, likeContinue reading “Two Houses: A Thanksgiving Reflection”

Upzoning in the administration’s own words

What is the Hamilton Administration telling us when it proposes to urbanize Bloomington’s traditional single family neighborhoods? Remember, this isn’t just the core neighborhoods — it’s many other areas and subdivisions around the city, some of whose residents believe they are covered by protective covenants that prohibited multiplex development, as indeed they did before thoseContinue reading “Upzoning in the administration’s own words”