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Last updated on Thursday, December 14, 2017
(BLOOMINGTON) - The City of Bloomington has just published a new website, BloomingtonRevealed.com. This custom site, built outside of the city’s main website, is designed to present data and information in an easy-to-access fashion.
The first project on the site is an in-depth analysis of the data points associated with the City's safety, civility and justice initiatives. The site features interactive visualizations of data from City of Bloomington departments, the Monroe County Health Department, the Monroe County Coroner, Shalom Community Center, IU Health, Monroe County Court Appointed Special Advocates, the Monroe County Prosecutor, and the Indiana State Department of Health.
The website was built by the Mayor's Office of Innovation in collaboration with the Safety, Civility and Justice (SCJ) Metrics Team, which was formed in August 2017 with the goal of identifying potential measurements to assess the city's progress in implementing the SCJ Task Force's recommendations. The team's work identified several findings from the data-driven site:
Monroe County has seen a significant increase in the number of children assigned to the Court Appointed Special Advocate program, from 200 children in 2006 to nearly 700 in 2017. A large percent of this increase includes children under 7 years old.
The number of addicted newborns born in Monroe County has increased from 3 in 2011 to 64 in 2016. So far 51 addicted newborns have been born in Monroe County this year.
There has not been a spike in calls for service for Bloomington Fire Department or Police Department over the past 3 years. Bloomington Police Department calls for service actually decreased from 2015 to 2016; the top two categories in calls for service for BPD were traffic-related and welfare checks.
Compared to national averages, Monroe County has lower wages and higher housing costs.
"This website is intended to help and better inform those in and around issues surrounding homelessness. We hope that with greater access to accurate information, effective solutions can be found based on real data, leading to better outcomes," stated Mayor John Hamilton.
The Mayor's Office will host a Facebook Live Question and Answer event in January for questions that individuals and groups may have about the resources and data in the website, as well as the city's continuing efforts to make the community more safe, civil, and just.
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