The 812
Steve Volan / Plateia Media
The 812 is a daily show about the basic workings of city government in Bloomington, Indiana. Hosted by Steve Volan, a recently-retired five-term member of Bloomington's City Council, The 812's primary feature is a half-hour interview with elected and appointed officials in city government, as well as with members of boards, commissions and not-for-profits providing services to the city. Produced by Plateia Media.
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Top 10 The 812 Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The 812 episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The 812 for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The 812 episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
![The 812 - 140 [S2E43]: How the Janeway Collective Built a Public Art Project](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/1bzb2j1j18js4txbvfwbv1jlujlk?.avif)
11/13/24 • 35 min
On the B-Line Trail downtown, there's a bust of Kathryn Janeway, captain of the USS Voyager, from the Star Trek series of the same name. How it got there is our subject today. Our guests are Peter Kaczmarczyk and Lee Lawmaster, former presidents and members still of the Janeway Collective, the organization that fundraised for, designed and installed a statue dedicated to the fictional captain on Star Trek: Voyager in 2020. The Collective then brought the actor who played her, Kate Mulgrew, to town for a post-pandemic ceremony two years later. Kaczmarczyk and Lawmaster talk about the challenges of such a project on today's episode, the journey of a one-off public arts project from concept to execution, and a case study on working with your local government.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
11/11/24 • 37 min
The city's efforts to cultivate entrepreneurship is embodied in the buildings that were auxiliary to the Showers Brothers Furniture Factory, a third of which famously became Bloomington's city hall in the mid-90s, and another third of which was acquired from IU by the county and is now the Monroe County Government Center. Several smaller brick buildings have been preserved and remade into workplaces for 21st-century new businesses, which more often than not are information technology-related. That area, dubbed The Trades District by the city, lies between 10th and 11th, Rogers and Morton Streets.
The Dimension Mill, with the same sawtooth roofline, is now a cowork space and the state's biggest tech incubator. We talk today with Pat East, executive director of The Mill, as well as senior vice president John Fernandez, who also happens to be a former two-term mayor of Bloomington. (We'll invite him back sometime to talk about his administration, which was the first to occupy the new Showers Building City Hall in 1996.) The Mill was the first of several buildings to be renovated or built in the Trades District, now runs the District on behalf of the city. We'll talk about the Kiln, the Showers Administration Building, the Forge, which is being built right now across from the Mill, and what's planned for the rest of the Trades District.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
06/11/24 • 32 min
Today's show features county councilmember Cheryl Munson, who's running for her fourth term. She is also an archaeologist (emerita) from IU Bloomington, who has done research here in the state of Indiana. We dig up her opinions on salaries, public safety, the convention center, and more.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
10/18/24 • 37 min
The Monroe County History Center on 6th and Washington is a museum, a library, an event space, and then some. Not every community has such a thing -- it's not part of the Public Library, so it relies entirely on donations and grants, yet it has several full-time staff. We talk with Daniel Schlegel, the Center's Director, and Megan MacDonald, the Center's Librarian. They tell us all about the place, including its holdings regarding limestone and the old RCA factory, people doing genealogy research, cemeteries in the county, the history of the building itself, and some of the amusing stories they've collected over time.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
10/16/24 • 36 min
Ellen Jacquart is the president of Monroe County Identify and Reduce Invasive Species, or MC-IRIS for short. She leads a surprisingly large group of volunteers who have made it their mission to help pull plants that shouldn't be here because they're not native to the area, and in many cases, crowd out plants that are. Whether it's the Callery pear, the asian bush honeysuckle, or the so-called tree of heaven -- don't cut that one, friend, it could give you a heart attack -- they've got to go, but they're hard to get rid once they've literally taken root in our community. Jacquart talks with Steve Volan about MC-IRIS' philosophical approach to wrestling with Mother Nature, and how you can help.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
06/14/24 • 33 min
Our guest today is Jennifer Crossley. She's been the 4th District representative to the Monroe County Council since December 2021, when she was elected in a Democratic Party caucus to replace Eric Spoonmore, who resigned to become president of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. When she took office, she resigned her position as chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party. She won election to her seat in 2022. She also serves as a Deputy City Clerk in Bloomington, so her knowledge of the community is broad and multifaceted.
She talks about the Council's primary task of budgeting, the learning curve she had when she was caucused into the job in late 2021, and we get into the question of the jail and the future of the county justice system, among other topics.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
10/21/24 • 37 min
Van Buren Township, to the city's west-southwest, is the fourth most populous township in Monroe County (about 12,000 people as of the last census). In the first half of our interview, Township Trustee Rita Barrow (pronounced "borrow") lays out how she handles the role of trustee in Van Buren, including building new headquarters and dealing with disputes over weeds and fence lines.
In the second half, the episode really gets into the weeds: host Steve Volan asks her about fire department mergers, the still-cooking county development ordinance, and, the elephant in the room, Bloomington's notorious attempt at annexation of significant parts of the unincorporated areas nearest to it, including significant areas of Van Buren. (Full disclosure: when Steve was on city council, he voted in 2021 for the city's annexation proposal, while Rita has been leading the opposition to annexation since 2017.)
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
05/30/24 • 32 min
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.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
06/17/24 • 34 min
Our first two excerpts are from interviews with members of the Monroe County Council. We get thoughts about the problems with the county jail and developing a new so-called justice system in the county from at-large member Cheryl Munson and District 4 member Jennifer Crossley. In the second half, we welcomed back at-large Bloomington city councilmember Matt Flaherty to discuss the need for a version 2.0 of the city's Climate Action Plan. Then at-large member Isak Asare, who agreed to come back on to the show only if he could usurp the host's role and put him in the guest chair. His wish was granted, and he to ask Steve Volan about issues from his time on city council.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
10/02/24 • 39 min
David Hittle, the city's new director of the Planning and Transportation Department, talks with Steve Volan about the documents that rule the planning process in this city: the Comprehensive Plan and the Unified Development Ordinance. We discuss how the department he runs works in practice, and the boards and commissions that collectively oversee the city's entire built environment.
This episode is the first for which we're also publishing an Extra Innings segment, where we talk about "car sewers", complete streets, and building new urban cores in the city. You can find it only from the webpage for this episode at our website, the812show.org.
The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.
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FAQ
How many episodes does The 812 have?
The 812 currently has 140 episodes available.
What topics does The 812 cover?
The podcast is about Interview, Local, Explainer, Podcasts, City, Government and Indiana.
What is the most popular episode on The 812?
The episode title '010: The812's Digest for the Week of January 22' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The 812?
The average episode length on The 812 is 33 minutes.
How often are episodes of The 812 released?
Episodes of The 812 are typically released every 1 day, 1 hour.
When was the first episode of The 812?
The first episode of The 812 was released on Jan 16, 2024.
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