Working Toward Sustainability

As a City Council representative, I will make sustainability a guiding principle for all my decisions. Sustainability is the concept of meeting the needs of our current generation while not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This often relates to our stewardship of the environment and earth’s resources. We cannot continue to deplete our fuel resources, for example, and pollute our environment without regard to how this will effect seven generations in the future.

In Bloomington, we have a great start on sustainability efforts. The city established the Commission on Sustainability in 2005 to help foster sustainable environmental, economic, and social policies. In addition, our mayor and city council resolved in April 2006 to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions in our community so that we do our part to prevent global climate change. As chair of the Bloomington Environmental Commission in 2006, I played a key role in laying the groundwork for this local application of the Kyoto Protocol. At Indiana University, I was a member of the ad-hoc committee of faculty, staff, and students that successfully advocated for a Sustainability Task Force to implement sustainability programs in day-to-day operations as well as in the curriculum.

The city and we as Bloomington residents can do more every day to ensure a sustainable community. We can nurture the local economy to reduce the need for long-distance transportation and to keep our financial resources from leaving Bloomington. We can protect our environment by encouraging green development and discouraging sprawl. We can expand bus service and encourage walking and bicycle use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from single-passenger cars. The city council can and must continue to be a leader for increasing sustainability in Bloomington.

Isabel reviewing a development plan with other members of the Bloomington Environmental Commission.

Reducing Poverty

Monroe County has the 7th highest poverty rate in the state of Indiana, and we rank 85th out of 92 counties in median household income (STATS Indiana). Meanwhile, according to the 2003 Service Community Assessment of Needs (SCAN) report, our housing costs are among the highest in the state.

We have great social service agencies in Bloomington, but what we really must do is reduce the number of people who need these services.  We need to stop poverty at its roots through improved education, job training, and an increase in the number of living-wage jobs.  Self-sufficiency counseling can also go a long way toward breaking the cycle of poverty. Unfortunately, funding for such programs from state and federal resources is drying up. But the city can still set priorities and coordinate activities to give people the tools to meet their own basic needs.

For example, the city could facilitate cooperation between social service agencies so that they can share resources and personnel. Currently each agency, regardless of size, needs someone knowledgeable about human resources and payroll issues for their employees. Perhaps an expert in this field could handle human resource management in more than one agency, thus combining two or more part-time jobs and freeing up time for other administrators in each agency who handle more agency-specific tasks. This would lead to better service for the constituents of all agencies involved. The Monroe County NonProfit Alliance has already served to coordinate the actions of our excellent agencies, but more cooperation is needed.

I greatly admire the long-term view that Middle Way House has taken toward helping battered women and their children. In addition to offering counseling and a safe place to stay, Middle Way has developed two local businesses which employ women and give them a start toward economic self-sufficiency. Middle Way’s Confidential Document Destruction provides certified shredding services, while Middle Way’s Foodworks offers healthy catering for seniors and day care centers, as well as for special events around town. Many of Middle Way’s clients live with low incomes, so its programs address poverty as well as violence against women.

In the short term the city can support greater cooperation between existing agencies and continue to fund excellent projects proposed by our local agencies through the CDBG and Jack Hopkins funding sources.  Meanwhile, the city should place a priority on long-term poverty reduction by making sure that city funds support only those businesses that pay a living wage and offer health benefits to their employees and by partnering with schools and businesses to offer job training and vocational education. The city should also explore whether it is feasible to require that a certain percentage of each new residential development be required to meet affordable housing standards.
 

Isabel at a rally against outsourcing at Indiana University.

Increasing Collaboration

The greater the number of concerned citizens involved in addressing community problems, the better the long-term solutions that will be implemented. We need all stakeholder groups to tackle the issues of sustainability and poverty in Bloomington. Fostering greater collaboration by citizen, business, government, and education groups will be one of my primary goals as a member of the City Council.

We already benefit from many successful collaborations in Bloomington. For example, the South Central Community Action Program has worked with city’s Housing and Neighborhood Development department to build several affordable housing units in town. Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard food pantry offers gardening classes for low-income families to learn how to grown their own food at Crestmont Community Gardens, part of the city’s Parks and Recreation department. And the Help in Reaching Employment (HIRE) program, a collaboration between Ivy Tech-Bloomington and several local agencies, is providing job training for the growing life sciences industry.

These same kinds of partnerships should be explored and employed to address the causes of poverty in our community, and to work toward greater sustainability.

 

Paid for by Isabel Piedmont-Smith