The 812 - Steve Volan / Plateia Media

Latest Episodes:

086: Judge Catherine Stafford, on how the Monroe County Circuit Court system works Jun 06, 2024

Show notes

This show started by exploring Bloomington city government. But you're swimming in layers of local government. Recently we've expanded our scope to the other layers of government, like townships and the county council. This episode is our first crack at understanding the local judicial system.
Our guest today is Catherine Stafford. She's one of Monroe County's nine circuit court judges. She explains what local judges do and how they go about it. (Hint: a lot of what you see in those TV dramas are not really a thing...but you might be surprised at what things ARE a thing.)

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085: The 812 Work Session with Lucas Gonzalez, City Government Reporter, WFIU News Jun 05, 2024

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Interviews on this show are typically with decision and policy makers in Bloomington and Monroe County. But some people know a lot about the city and can explain the issues well, who may never have been elected or appointed officials. This is the latest entry in our occasional series that we call The 812 Work Session.
Today's Work Session guest is Lucas Gonzalez, the city government reporter for WFIU News. He talks with host Steve Volan about many current local issues, including the convention center, the Dunn Meadow protests and the city's Gaza ceasefire resolution, the Summit District decision, and more.

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084: Doppelgänger City, Part 2: How Campuses Infantilize Students Jun 04, 2024

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This episode is the second excerpt from a public talk Steve Volan gave last fall at the Collins Living-Learning Center in Bloomington, called "Doppelgänger Cities: A History of Campuses." The first excerpt was Episode 29 of The 812, posted February 23.
As you may know, Steve was a member of the city council here for the last 20 years, in a district that was almost entirely students at IU. After redistricting, more students than ever were drawn into District 6, and the district is now represented by a recent IU graduate of typical undergraduate age. (We recommend you go back and listen to our interview with Sydney Zulich in Episode 14, on February 2.)
While in that role, and to better come to terms with the state jurisdiction that had such great impact on his local jurisdiction, Steve authored a master's thesis looking into the origin of campuses. In Part 2, he weaves together the work of sociologist Ray Oldenberg and philosophers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben to illustrate the problems created by the substitition of "campus" for a regular urban environment, and analyzes the problematic everyday vocabulary of the campus that infantilizes the people it's supposed to serve.

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083: How to Run Things: The812 Digest for the Week of May 28 Jun 03, 2024

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Excerpts from recent interviews include county council at-large member and president Trent Deckard talks about leadership; county councilmember (D-2) Kate Wiltz talks about budgeting and the depth of county services; and Drew Bratton and Steve Versaw, board president and executive director (respectively) of BCT Management, Inc., the non-profit that runs the Buskirk-Chumley, the city's premier theatre.

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082: Trent Deckard, Monroe County Council President, on the Study of Leadership May 30, 2024

Show notes

Is a leader born or made? Is it nature... or nurture? This show won't answer that question definitively...but if anyone can answer that question, it's our guest today. Trent Deckard is the second of the three at-large members of the Monroe County Council to appear on the show, and this year is the council's president. He talks about running for office, current issues facing it, and leading the council. But he's not just a study in leadership -- he also studies leadership, which he's pursuing a PhD in. And we'll talk about that slogan on his yard signs -- Our Friend Trent Deckard -- and how people react to it.

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081: Kate Wiltz, Monroe County Council (D. 2) May 30, 2024

Show notes

We're plowing through a new landscape on the show: the wonderful world of county governance. Today we meet Kate Wiltz, the District 2 representative on the Monroe County Council. She talks about her district, explains the county budget process, some of her governing priorities, and how she decided to become a councilmember in the first place.

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080: How the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre Survives As the City's Premier Performing Arts Venue May 29, 2024

Show notes

Shakespeare needed his Globe Theatre; Bloomington needs its Buskirk-Chumley. The former Indiana Theatre is more than a century old, has been a publicly-owned 600-seat venue since the 1990s, and is still an eye-catching downtown landmark. How it got to be that way -- and how it survives -- are our topics today. Our guests are Steve Versaw and Drew Bratton, the executive director and the president of the board of directors, respectively, of BCT Management, Inc., the umbrella organization which runs the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre.

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079: Lo[ca]l [Governments]-A-Palooza: The812 Digest for the Week of May 21 May 28, 2024

Show notes

New to town, maybe? You deserve a gentle intro to the breadth of local governments. Note that we use the plural: this show is beginning to dig deeper into offices other than just within the city of Bloomington.
Today's episode is a good cross-section of what different local governments do. Along with a long-sought-after interview with city councilmember Dave Rollo, we venture beyond city limits to interview county councilmember Geoff McKim; the county's chief public defender, Michael Hunt; and Perry Township trustee Dan Combs.

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078: Dan Combs, Perry Township Trustee, on the Phenomenon of Townships May 24, 2024

Show notes

Townships are subdivisions of counties. Townships aren't much of a deal in most of the rest of the country, but it turns out that, in Indiana, they're still kind of a big deal. Monroe County is divided into 11 townships. Except for a couple of thousand people in Van Buren Township, and a couple of dozen in Richland Township, the 80,000-plus residents of the city of Bloomington are split almost evenly between Bloomington and Perry Townships.
Our guest today is Dan Combs, who's been the trustee of Perry Township since 1986. He explains what townships were for originally, what they're for now, and what he does on a daily basis as trustee. It's a crash course on the least-understood form of government you're subject to.

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077: Dave Rollo, City Councilmember (D-4) May 23, 2024

Show notes

The 812 has finally landed its interview with the elusive Dave Rollo, the senior member of the Bloomington city council. In this wide-ranging interview we discuss the carrying capacity of the city in light of the approval of the enormous new Summit District, as well as greenways, urban deer, and more.

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