District 5: Piedmont vs. Graves

The District 5 race for The Bloomington City Council is pretty cut and dried.\nDemocratic candidate Isabel Piedmont is well-educated – she graduated from Oberlin College and received a master’s degree from Boston University. She is also well-spoken, laying out her agenda in organized, clearly thought-out responses in an online interview with the Herald-Times. She has demonstrated her experience and is clearly more than qualified for the City Council position she seeks.\nHer Republican challenger, Alicia Graves, a 25-year-old Ivy Tech Community College student, is notably less experienced and less articulate in developing a clear sense of her agenda. Graves, a self-proclaimed “advocate for safety,” throws around concerns over the well-being of Bloomington’s children but doesn’t really offer any solutions or plans to combat the failures she sees in the current Council. One of her strongest convictions seems to be that Bloomington’s sidewalks are in disrepair – true but trivial.\nDon’t get me wrong, Graves is politically inexperienced – aside from founding Ivy Tech College Republicans she’s been absent from the political arena – but Bloomington City Council would be an appropriate place for a political start, were it not for the overwhelming qualifications of her opponent.\nIf Graves loses it will have less to do with her own plans and more to do with the superiority of Peidmont’s. \nBorn and raised in Bloomington, she comes to the table brimming with goals to enhance Bloomington’s environment and economy. She is well-versed in the sustainability issues she means to address in the local community. Piedmont has a plan. Through proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase funding for green space, draw tourism, revitalize older neighborhoods with incentives for homeowners and expand recycling pick up, Piedmont knows exactly what she plans to accomplish and how. Her goals are realistic and exciting, putting forth an impressive platform. Piedmont should easily win.