City Council member conducts final constituent meeting

Sitting around a large round table in Rachael’s Café, residents gathered with Bloomington City Council member Isabel Piedmont-Smith on Saturday to discuss current city issues for the last time.

Throughout the four years of Piedmont-Smith’s term for Bloomington’s District 5, she has had monthly constituent meetings, creating one-on-one interaction between the community and its city representative.

But Saturday, these meetings came to an end.

Elected to the city council in 2008, Democrat Piedmont-Smith did not run for reelection, and at the end of the year, her term expires. Elected as her successor is fellow Democrat Darryl Neher.

As Piedmont-Smith’s final constituent meeting began, a middle-aged man covered the Beatles’ “Let It Be” on acoustic guitar. Sitting only a few feet away, Piedmont-Smith struggled to speak above the music and the clatter of a coffee grinder.

Throughout the nearly hour-long meeting, 20 constituents and Piedmont-Smith discussed several current local issues, ranging from bicycling to increased fuel costs to urban chickens.

During Piedmont-Smith’s campaign, she recognized a varying range of opinions among her constituents.

As the department administrator for IU’s Department of French and Italian, Piedmont-Smith said she did not recognize these varying opinions outside of the University community until she began campaigning. For that reason, she decided to create constituent meetings each month and allow these opinions to be heard.

She is the only current member of the city council to have regular meetings with her constituents.

Bloomington resident Jeanette Richart said Piedmont-Smith’s last constituent meeting and the “changing of the guard” was a sad moment. She said Piedmont-Smith accomplished more in her one term than many people accomplish throughout their political careers.

Bloomington residents were first allowed to raise chickens within the city limits in 2006. But with the legislation came several restrictions. Anybody interested in raising chickens within the city limits must apply for a $20 license. They must also receive consent from their next-door neighbors, a requirement Piedmont-Smith says restricts the number of license holders.

Piedmont-Smith said the ability for local residents to raise chickens in their yards is an important issue, particularly for low-income residents. Beyond the initial expense, she said it’s an economically efficient way to obtain eggs. Most importantly she said it’s a form of self-sufficiency.

“I think it’s cool to put people in touch with where their food comes from,” she said. “Food doesn’t come from the grocery store. Food comes from a farm. There’s a connection with the earth there that is lost for a lot of people. They just get it out of a box and off the shelf.”

Piedmont-Smith gained interest in politics during the 2000 presidential elections. As former Vice President Al Gore and former President George W. Bush competed as the election’s top contenders, Piedmont-Smith supported Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

Throughout Nader’s campaign, Piedmont-Smith aimed to fix Nader’s name to the ballot, a goal she never accomplished.

She supported Nader, she said, because unlike Gore and Bush, his campaign and agenda were not influenced by large corporations.
 
For three years, Piedmont-Smith was active with the Monroe County Green Party. In 2004, Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan appointed Piedmont-Smith to the city’s Environmental Commission. Environmentalism and promoting green spaces within Bloomington have remained important issues for Piedmont-Smith.

As a city council member, she considers her largest accomplishment the city’s Green Building Ordinance, enacted in 2008. Piedmont-Smith co-sponsored the legislation with council member Dave Rollo.

The ordinance requires all government buildings within Bloomington to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Silver Standard by 2022.

“LEED encompasses all aspects of a building — the site plans, where you’re going to build it, the energy efficiency of the building, the passive solar lighting that you can gain by putting windows in certain areas of the building,” Piedmont-Smith said. “It’s a very wholistic approach to building.”

After serving four years on the city council, Piedmont-Smith decided not to run for reelection. She said the post required more of her time than she expected.

“I’m somebody who doesn’t do things halfway,” she said. “I really want to research the issues, talk to people, read very carefully the legislation that comes before us, and so it has taken more of my time than what I feel I can give right now.”

However, she plans to stay involved in politics after her term ends. She was recently elected to the Steering Committee of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, a political action committee working to have progressive women elected to office in Monroe County.

Neher will take over Piedmont-Smith’s post beginning Jan. 1, 2012.
Attending Piedmont-Smith’s final constituent meeting, which ended in a “thank you” and applause from her constituents, Neher said he also plans to have regular meetings with his constituents.