The Electron Pencil

Just a reminder: You only have five chances left to scream to high heaven about Mayor John Hamilton’s annexation plan, intended to go into effect in 2020. The mayor proposes adding some 10,000 acres and 15,000 new residents to the city.

Here are the remaining dates for the series of six public meetings scheduled at City Hall:

• Tonight, 6-8pm
• Tomorrow, 11am-1pm
• Thursday, March 23, 11am-1pm
• Friday, March 24, 6-8pm
• Saturday, March 25, 11am-1pm

Hamilton sprung the news in an announcement early last month that shocked not only residents of the areas under consideration but Bloomington’s own city council members. The legislative process — the council must approve the plan — as well as the public comment window and remonstrance period conceivably all could run their courses in a mere six months. The mayor clearly employed a shock and awe strategy, hoping to stem any organized resistance to the expansion. He’s eager to get the city’s hands on unincorporated areas along the State Road 37/I-69 corridor, plus the fast growing east side residential areas outside the city limits. The payoff? Business and real estate taxes and the county option income tax revenues.

Treasure Hunter

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The council may begin voting on the various annexation ordinances as early as June. The remonstrance period would then follow for the next 90 days.

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Lemon Heads

I’m betting you’re gonna dig Thursday’s edition of Big Talk. I hosted a real Jess-Fest in the studio yesterday afternoon as my guests were Jess Lavandoski, co-founder of the Middle Coast Film Festival, and the event’s business manager, Jess Reed. They gabbed w/ me about movies and stage plays (Reed also handles biz affairs for the Bloomington Playwrights Project) and the burgeoning relationship between the film and theater scenes in Bloomington and Glens Falls, New York. Oh, and Levandoski explains how her life so closely resembles that of one of the sitcom world’s most iconic female characters.

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) of “30 Rock” Fortifies Herself

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Tune in Thursday on WFHB, 91.3 FM, for the Daily Local News at 5pm. Big Talk usually comes on around 5:15. Go here for links to previous Big Talks.

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Spring Song

First full day of spring, 2017, woo-hoo!

Here’s a tune that I listened to constantly in the spring of 1979. It’s from Patti Smith’s “Wave” album, produced by Todd Rundgren. The song is a love poem dedicated to her future husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith (yeah, she married a guy with the same last name) of the seminal Detroit punk band, MC5. “Sonic” died of heart failure in 1994 at the age of 45 after he and Patti’d had a couple kids. The Smiths got married the year after this track was released.

BTW: Lemme sneak in a rec for Patti Smith’s National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids in case you haven’t read it yet. Fabulous stuff. Anyway, “Frederick”:

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