BLOOMINGTON – Joe Davis has filed candidacy paperwork and provided a statement in support of his candidacy to fill the office of Monroe County Councilperson at Large.
Eligible Precinct Committeepersons will gather at the Nat U. Hill Room of the Monroe County Courthouse on Sunday, January 5, 2025, at 1 p.m. to vote in caucus to appoint pro tempore a candidate for this vacancy.
MCDP will only share statements by those candidates who have filed their paperwork with the Party Secretary.
Dear Committee Members, January 2, 2025
Hello. My name is Joe Davis. I am the best person to fill the vacant position of Monroe County Councilor at Large, that was formerly held by our beloved Cheryl Munson. It is with sadness that my friend will no longer be a striving force for the good of the People in her long-held role of needed and important governance for our deserving citizenry.
However, with her absence, there is a great opportunity to continue and improve upon her generous and thoughtful service through these next four years of pivotal work to obtain the best for our shared community. With the results of the recent election, the People have spoken for Change. I am you. I am that Change.
As a farm boy from Cass County, Indiana, I was taught the values of land stewardship and community caretaking from the time that I was carried on the hip of my parents, grandparents, and those in mutual support of our working class striving for a better tomorrow.
I carried these values with me to Monroe County over thirty years ago as a young adult in pursuit of my dreams. These dreams were to teach and empower others in self-reliance, protection of our fragile environment, and security in our ability to sustainably shelter ourselves, our families, and our community. My working career of fifty years has been about that. And, at the cusp of being sixty years old, and wise, my passion toward this end continues to run deep.
Everyone has a voice. Every voice deserves to be heard. As a candidate for this very same office of Councilor at Large, I have spoken to thousands of people over the last two years.
Overwhelmingly, they have expressed a desire for the basics of food, shelter, and opportunity to improve their daily and long-term existence. Sadly, many have given up hope, dropped out of civic participation, and embraced the lie of victimization. “Why vote? Why care? Nothing will change. The system is rigged.” these are the words that I hear from Our People as they witness our community’s wealth of both land and money being handed over to those who wish to exploit us.
On December 27, 2024, the Herald-Times published the tax abatements given away to for-profit businesses by our elected county officials. A staggering 106,045,669.00 Million dollars in tax abatement was gifted to these for-profit entities that cannot even vote in our elections.
The year before, the giveaway tax abatement total was over $126 Million. Our Democracy was founded on one person, one vote. Some of our current elected officials seem to have forgotten this founding principle. Just think what our local government could do with these mountainous sums of money to fix our crumbling sidewalks, roads, buildings, jail, and other pressing needs?
Instead, you and I, we, the people, are paying out of our pockets to place band-aids on our infrastructure, our necessary services, and our diminishing opportunity to simply survive.
This misuse of taxpayer funds gets worse. Under the guise of economic development, our elected county officials have burdened us with an unjust food and beverage tax and given away, in perpetuity, the control of our most valuable downtown County property (owned by the People) to an unelected commission that is doing the bidding of a handful of vampiric business interests. This transfer of public wealth will soon reach over 100 million, and it will grow.
And then, the jail …. The proposed relocation of the Charlotte Zeitlow Justice Center will remove a dire justice need from downtown, where it has been since our County’s founding, to a location out in the county where it will only exacerbate the inequities of those in our Community who have not with those who have and are seeking to have more. In a few years, we, the People, will pay more than $ 300 Million of our hard-earned money to fund his injustice of justice.
Our system of local government relies on checks and balances. The County Council, as a legislative body, is integral to that check and balance against the Executive. Now is the time to place a strong warrior for the People into the current vacancy on the Council. The People demand that their voices are heard and represented. Simply filling this vacancy with a warm body that goes along to get along will not serve the public, nor will it be good.
Now is the time for a strong leader who has already spent hours in the People’s advocacy before the County and City’s elected and appointed bodies. Now is the time for the recent election of Monroe County Councilor at Large’s next man up.
Now is the time to place Joe Davis into office.
Committee Members, the People are counting on you to do the right thing. Thank you.
Humbly submitted,
Joe Davis
930-904-0598
