Show Notes
Any roads outside Bloomington, Ellettsville or Stinesville are the jurisdiction of Monroe County. Today, we talk to the County Highway Department about how they manage the condition of more than 700 miles of roads.Our guests today are Lisa Ridge, the Highway Dept. director, and her deputy, Toby Turner, the Highway Superintendent. They talk about what it takes to maintain a roadway properly (hint: it's not just about paving), how they deal with water, and how it all gets funded. It's a crash c...
More from 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 ...
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 individu...
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 ty...
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 p...
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...