Kyle Bell

The Mayor of South Bend, Indiana today announced that the city would apply for federal grants that would make it possible for a streetcar system to link downtown with the University of Notre Dame, residential and commercial areas of the city. As the South Bend Tribune reports:
Transpo, the local bus service, is seeking federal grants [...]

[Read more →]

The past couple weeks we have been tracking the Indiana Senate race as former senator Dan Coats announced his plans to challenge incumbent Senator Evan Bayh. Polling showed that Bayh was far ahead 55-35% and would cruise to re-election. Yet just a day before the filing deadline, Bayh announced that he would not be seeking [...]

[Read more →]

Just a day after former senator Dan Coats announced his entrance into the Indiana Senate race, a poll shows that he has a lot of ground to make up before he can call himself a “current senator”. Incumbent Democrat Evan Bayh, who enjoys a 61% approval rating in the state, leads Coats by 20 points. [...]

[Read more →]

Former Senator Dan Coats of Indiana has made it official on a South Bend radio station. He will be challenging incumbent Democrat Evan Bayh for Indiana’s junior seat in the Senate. Coats retired in 1998 when Evan Bayh, a popular two term governor, announced that he would be running for the seat. Since leaving the [...]

[Read more →]

The Today Show recently aired a piece in which they named the top 10 U.S. cities based on home value. Factoring into their list were things such as cost of living, rising home prices and job growth. My hometown of South Bend, Indiana came in at #1 on the list. Not too shabby, I would [...]

[Read more →]

We’ve done a lot of reporting about Elkhart and the state of the economy on this blog. President Obama of course brought national attention when he visited the city twice, once to announce an electric vehicle that would be made in the city. Another electric car company will be moving to town in the near [...]

[Read more →]

Yesterday, President Obama paid his seventh visit to the South Bend area (his third as president) in a speech in Wakarusa, Indiana in Elkhart County. Elkhart County, which is just east of South Bend, is nationally known for its incredibly high unemployment of nearly 17 percent. It actually peaked earlier this year and has come [...]

[Read more →]

Last week the state of Indiana was facing a budget deadline that threatened to shut down the state government. In a last hour attempt to pass a “bi-partisan” (i.e. Republican-friendly) two year budget, changes were made that would allow for minimal increases in education funding. Minimal being the key word: 1.1 percent for the first [...]

[Read more →]

South Bend Mayor Stephen Luecke today signed an executive order that prohibits “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in any city employment.” The South Bend Common Council failed to act on the issue of employment discrimination in the city of South Bend in 2006 when a proposal lost by a single [...]

[Read more →]

President Obama delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame today in my hometown of South Bend, Indiana. It is an honor to have President Obama back in South Bend as President of the United States. Just about this time last year he was visiting the city campaigning for the Indiana primary. Now [...]

[Read more →]