November 14th, 2019
Queue the Sleighbells, Quiet on the Set!
Just when it looked like production of Hallmark’s holiday movies were facing certain demise after firing star Lori Loughlin (as she faces jail time for paying $500K in bribes to University of Southern California so her daughter could produce Instagram photos from fraternity keggers), enter Carmel’s Christkindlmrkt. The holiday wonderland on Center Green has been pitched as a possible backdrop for filming one of the cable channel’s holiday movies. While it’s described as a bit of a longshot, that doesn’t stop us from coming up with fantastic movie titles like, “Deck the Roundabout with Boughs of Holly” or “Home Alone at The Carmichael.” While we’re dreaming of how we’re going to spend our checks received as cast extras, let’s head back to the reality of doing business.
No Shortage of Legislative Topics in Short Session . Despite the fact the next gathering of the Indiana General Assembly will be a short session, Sen. J.D. Ford says there’s no shortage of issues facing the state that he’d like to address. In our latest One-on-OneZone video, Ford answers two important questions: “What is a short session, anyway?” and “How does the youngest member of the legislature who is also a Democrat reach across the aisle to get anything done?” Click here to learn more. Meanwhile, mark your calendar for December 13 for the preview of the upcoming session at OneZone’s Legislative Breakfast. 
Wanted: Better Turnout. Speaking of shortages, Hamilton County continues to have a dire shortage of citizens who participate in elections. While the official report won’t be issued until tomorrow, initial reports suggest the county had slightly more than 15 percent of registered voters turn out to vote. To be fair, we’ve made significant headway since 2015 when only 103,000 folks were registered to vote compared to more than 221,000 registered in 2019. Nonetheless, an issue of lagging civic participation remains an issue. A newly formed, bipartisan 501 (c)(3) organization plans to address the issue. The Indiana Citizen Education Foundation Inc. has been created to increase the number of informed Hoosier voters and what it describes as Indiana’s lagging civic rankings. Co-founder Bill Moreau has made the local-media tour promoting the organization’s website, https://www.indianacitizen.org/ . It’s worth a look as we, “ask not what our county can do for us …”
No NIMBYs in Climate Change . Back in the 1990s, we heard a lot about “NIMBY” – Not In My Back Yard – as it applied to issues that people supported or denounced … as long as it had nothing to do with them. Two decades later, as we watch in horror as the streets of Venice fill will floodwaters and wildfires rage among the California redwoods, Hoosiers are rarely front-and-center on “climate change news.” However, that doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t impacting local businesses and municipalities. The  Hoosier Resilience Index  launched Tuesday as a first-of-its-kind online tool that combines publicly available data sets and allows users to search for impacts in their local communities. The Index is meant to help city, town and county governments as well as businesses understand how climate change will affect their towns and better prepare, like building bigger stormwater drains to planting trees in front of sun-facing windows.