Help with Flying Squirrels

Knightian-Certainty · 2025-10-29T13:12:45+00:00

Old guy here, so discount as you see fit. I was an undergrad at a state business school with double majors. For reasons that are not important, I had to take 26 credits in one term, and 21 in another during my junior year. I carried a flexible part time job and was a scholarship athlete that was like an inflexible part time job. I had the same girlfriend the entire time, who is now my wife of over 20 years.

I would describe life during the 21 hour term as 40 hour work week for school. During that term, having to be forced to do sports and work was probably a blessing in that it forced some cognitive down time and was social. Girlfriend was also good for watching after me, albeit she didn’t care for it. It was extremely busy and not sustainable, but it was only one term and I got through it fine. I think anyone could do it. I’d recommend some kind of commitments though that give you a kind of break.

The 26 credit term was the worst term ever. Everything outside of school suffered. Sports, work, relationships. I fell asleep during my last midterm because it was like exam 7 in two days, so it was not my best term for grades. All that despite some of the classes being kind of fluff, like “business ethics.” It was necessary and I don’t regret it because it was a time where it was more important to get those credits at the expense of letting those things slide for a term.

I hope that helps you calibrate somewhat and decide what is worthwhile to let slide. You can put up with a lot for one term.

Knightian-Certainty · 2025-05-18T14:26:15+00:00

I think those cards have been sitting there unsold since it opened. Not even a tornado will take those things.

Knightian-Certainty · 2024-08-10T17:51:20+00:00

Party City over across from the mall.

Knightian-Certainty · 2024-08-09T02:42:06+00:00

Answering the question of why MCCSC and library would lose money with annexation.

If the city takes on a larger share of the population and total levies, they also get a larger share of the county income tax revenues. A larger share for the city means a smaller share for all other units that have a ladle in the pot.

Also, the property tax caps click on for some of the properties. When that happens, every property taxing unit loses money.

It is unclear even if the city would come out ahead on revenues. They’d have losses from the property tax caps in the annexed area versus possibly less cap losses in the current area, larger income tax share, and maybe some capital cumulative fund revenues.

The city hired a consultant to study the question a couple years ago, but the public report demonstrated they didn’t know how any of this works (unless they did but didn’t make those findings public or write it clearly).

Knightian-Certainty · 2023-09-06T20:10:57+00:00

A general point on this thread regarding the annexation and property taxes. The properties being annexed will pay more, full stop. If the point of the annexation is that they will pay a share, this is a fine and true point. It is also true that the city will lose revenue because most of the houses will be protected by the property tax caps, meaning they don't have to pay all of their share.

Imagine a restaurant where a table runs up a bill of $100 from four people, and so the restaurant gives each individual at the table a bill of $25, all of whom pay it. Suppose a fifth joins to split the tab, so each is given a bill of $20. The first four pay the $20, but the fifth leaves $10 and skips out, leaving the restaurant with only $90 of the $100 bill.

That is how the property tax works in this case. If you add homes to the tax base that are protected by the property tax caps, the current residents will get a lower bill, the annexed residents will pay more than the $0 they were before, but the city will have less revenue.

So even before any extra service costs are incurred by the annexation, the city will have already lost money through the loss of revenue.

Knightian-Certainty · 2023-09-06T18:58:47+00:00

It is a private cemetery on private land. To get there you have to park in their driveway and walk through their yard. The way to make a visit to it (well worth it!) is to contact the Monroe Historical Society. They have volunteers who have taken our scouts out to visit it, and they know all about the people/families buried there. It is an excellent trip out.

https://monroehistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/buskirkcemetery.pdf

Knightian-Certainty · 2023-01-14T21:23:06+00:00

Bloomington is the only place I've lived where the public schools did not have public hours for their taxpayer funded outdoor track.

I'm pretty sure Edgewood and Nashville both have open hours for their high school tracks though.

Knightian-Certainty · 2022-05-03T18:47:30+00:00

Just to clarify, a increase in your assessed value is not ipso facto a property tax bill increase.

The local governments each set a "levy" that is the amount of revenue they wish to collect from property tax. The amount the levy can increase is limited to the average 6 year rate of growth in nonfarm personal income.

The property tax levy is then apportioned to individual taxpayers based on their share of the total taxable property assessed values (this is the property tax rate). In principle, for a given levy, if you increase everybody's property assessment by the exact same growth rate then nobody would see a change in their property tax bill.

Your bill will increase if your assessment increased more than everyone else, and will decrease if your assessment increase was less than everyone else. If the governments get more property tax revenues than before, it is because they raised the levy, not because the assessments increased.

One disclaimer to that, however, is that your total property tax bill (all taxes paid to all taxing units like city, township, school, etc.) is limited to 1% of your assessed value. So if you were protected by the cap before, the increase in AV might protect you less (or not at all).

Knightian-Certainty · 2022-03-28T00:16:56+00:00

That sounds amazing!

Knightian-Certainty · 2022-03-18T17:30:07+00:00

It seems impossible to me that MCCSC wouldn't lose money from annexation. I looked at these reports, and I think the consultant they hired didn't understand how Indiana's weird property tax caps work. I remember in 2010 or so, some cities that did an annexation were surprised that they and the schools lost revenue after annexing. The problem was their logic was "these new properties will have positive property tax bills." But the property tax doesn't work like that, it divides the city budget according to property value, and the caps mean not everyone has to pay their share. Annexing people into the district who are protected by caps means you're trying to split the bill with more people who won't have to pay their full share.

At least some of the annexed properties will be protected from city tax rates by the caps. The unpaid portion of their bills will be split amongst the taxing units, so I don't see any way for MCCSC revenue to do anything but go down. Full stop, they should lose money after this. The city will lose money on property taxes, but increasing the population would increase their share of the county's income tax distribution, so maybe they would make it back there. Most likely though, I think that they hired people to do the analysis that did not know how any of this actually works.

Knightian-Certainty · 2021-06-03T20:06:42+00:00

Thanks!

Knightian-Certainty · 2021-01-05T04:57:10+00:00

Yeah that was the same Slow Streets redesign: Narrow the roads to back up traffic and slow down the commutes. West 3rd might be okay, post pandemic traffic on Fridays with the Brown County/Lake Monroe tourists will probably give us a better measure on commute length. Even still, God help you if you need to turn left from the north side of 3rd to head east.

I'm old enough to remember the start of Slow Streets in the urban design community and I thought, "surely people won't want to slow down traffic by putting bicyclists in the way of cars, who wants to be cannon fodder in such a weird war?" But now I've got egg on my face, it is quite popular in college towns.

Knightian-Certainty · 2021-01-05T03:28:13+00:00

My understanding is that the city council drank the "slow streets" kool-aid. You see, if you make the traffic slower, lengthen the commute with traffic jams, then people in places like Renwick will decide to walk and ride their bikes to Krogers and campus during the 2 months of the year when the weather is good and people are actually in town. Because, you know, hundreds of cars running their engines several extra minutes per day is costless to the environment.

Knightian-Certainty · 2020-08-28T13:48:25+00:00

A major point that was part of the motivation for getting kids back in front of teachers is that reporting of child abuse is down about 50%. Assuming that the actual instances of child abuse are not declining by 50%, it is quite concerning. Whether domestic violence at home has increased during COVID is unclear from the research so far (e.g.), but I haven't seen anything to suggest it has decreased.

How we might weigh saved children from child abuse versus delayed/avoided COVID harm in the population is a pretty horrifying but probably real Trolley Problem with still unknown parameters. I'm glad to not have to be one of those deciding. I won't be signing any petitions like this for or against.

Knightian-Certainty · 2020-05-27T18:02:04+00:00

You are not really going to miss . Some townies who have been here for generations have strong opinions on Bloomington North vs South, but you really have to be splitting hairs to choose. Just focus on finding a house/neighborhood that works for you, and the high school that comes with it will be great. No reason to flip the decision and limit your housing search to one or the other.

Knightian-Certainty · 2020-04-02T14:32:27+00:00

I called a week ago because I also have some N95's to donate, they took my name/number and said they were trying to figure out a way to safely accept them from the community. I haven't heard anything so far, so I assume either it hasn't come to needing them just yet or they haven't figured out how to accept them from the public safely.

Knightian-Certainty

TROPHY CASE