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After drawing nearly 20,000 attendees last year, Taste of Bloomington organizers are introducing several changes to improve crowd flow and the overall visitor experience for this year.

A lead organizer, Jordan Davis, said the 2026 festival will feature a larger footprint, redesigned layout, and operational improvements.

Last year's festival marked the event's return after four years and exceeded organizer expectations. Davis said the biggest challenges include crowd congestion, trash collection, and overcrowded vendor areas.

Among the biggest changes is the full closure of Dunn Street, which was the festival's most congested area last year. Organizers also expanded the festival farther north along Grant Street to Sixth Street to help spread out visitors.

The children's area has been moved from People's Park to the Monroe County History Center, giving families access to indoor and air-conditioned space if temperatures climb.

A third live music stage has also been added at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

Organizers also upgraded behind-the-scenes operations, with nearly 150 staff members. They will handle waste collection, and restaurants will display high-mounted menus.

This year's festival will go from 3-10 p.m. Aug 1 and feature 75 food vendors, up from 50 last year. Food will continue to cost $5 or less.

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County commissioners voted Thursday to sever ties with the license-plate scanning company Flock Safety a year before it was set to expire.

The county will have to pay Flock Safety about $3,000 to remove the six cameras currently being used by the Monroe County Sheriff's Office.

" I think it is $3,000 well spent," commissioner Jody Madeira said before the vote. "I appreciate the advocacy of the citizens who spoke before the city on this issue, and I think that it would be worth paying that $3,000 as a county."

Commissioner Julie Thomas said the technology has helped to reduce crime but she still voted to end the contract, citing privacy concerns.

"It has helped them find people who are missing. It has helped them track people coming into the county to do nefarious things," she said. "It has a role. But the way the data has been abused—and we've seen national stories about this—is terrible."

Thomas said she would notify the company of the decision right away.

Thomas also said that she consulted Sheriff Ruben Marté before the vote and that he did not object to cancelling the contract. A sheriff's office spokesperson did not immediately respond to messages over the weekend.

In April, the City of Bloomington announced it would not renew its contract with Flock Safety after protests from privacy and civil rights advocates.

Responding to that decision, sheriff's office spokesperson Jeff Brown defended the cameras, saying they had helped solve serious crimes.

“It could be a missing person, a missing juvenile, an endangered adult,” Brown said in an interview in April. “We have our detectives using it for more serious crimes, murders, or robberies, burglaries.”

Monroe County’s long-running jail dispute is likely to end at the negotiating table rather than at trial, one legal expert said.

Nicholas Almendares, associate professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, said  courts may hesitate to force the county to take affirmative action, but it is a potential path to resolution.

“It's not easy for a court or anyone really to tell Monroe County what to do,” he said. “And there's like a million little decisions in there.”

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal class action lawsuit against the Monroe County Council, Monroe County Commissioners and Sheriff Ruben Marté earlier this month on behalf of jail detainees, alleging unconstitutional conditions that the organization has pressed the county to fix for nearly two decades.

Almendares said he thinks the most likely outcome is a negotiated settlement in which the ACLU and the county agree on terms before trial.

EDIT: This story has been updated to clarify the 2009 settlement agreement did not include an agreement to build a new jail; rather, both parties agreed to cap the jail population. Federal law restricts federal courts from directing localities to build a jail.

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IU defeated Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf 98-64 in last night’s FISU America Games exhibition.

Scratch that.

Team USA defeated Canada 98-64 in last night’s FISU America Games exhibition at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

The game served as a lead-up into the FISU America Games which will take place later this month in Lima, Peru.

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A Monroe Circuit Court judge has temporarily blocked part of a new Indiana immigration law from being enforced in Monroe County.

Judge Luke Rudisill issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday against a section of Senate Enrolled Act 76, also called the FAIRNESS Act, over Fourth Amendment concerns.

The law went into effect across the rest of Indiana today. The case focuses on language requiring law enforcement agencies to “comply with all requests made in the immigration detainer request.”

Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté said complying with ICE detainers could mean holding individuals in custody beyond their scheduled release dates.

In his ruling, Rudisill focused on whether the clause could violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. He noted that ICE detainers are issued by immigration officers rather than judges, and they are based on civil immigration concerns rather than criminal charges with probable cause.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita criticized the injunction in a social media post, saying Marté “lost big time” in a recent federal case and “failed in his attempt in state court” to block the law.

Marté was denied an injunction in the federal because of jurisdiction, not the substance of the case. The state court had paused a case while the federal case proceeded.

Rokita said the state plans to appeal the injunction and said he is confident the law is constitutional.

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