Culver

Culver Plan Commission September MIA?

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Just a mini rant… I was a bit upset to find out that the September Plan Commission meeting was cancelled because there wasn’t anything on the agenda. (Per the Building Commissioner) I know it’s a mostly thankless job and that the pay is poor. ($0: They’re volunteers) I was still disappointed that the commission didn’t take the opportunity to catch up on some of the things that they don’t have time for because their meetings are usually busy. Here’s a short list off the top of my head:

  • The Comprehensive Plan – Most of the Plan Commission has not been involved in the production of the new comp plan, having delegated it to Culver Crossroads. Only one Plan Commission member has been an active Culver Crossroads participant. While the production has been delegated, passing of the plan will still fall on them and this would have been a good time to familiarize themselves with the current draft before the required public meetings. As it stands, they are going to have trouble answering public input questions, since they are not familiar with the new document or the decision making process that went into it.
  • The Solar Ordinance – They have discussed the need to move this forward quickly as the moratorium passed by the Town Council has left property owners in limbo. This would have been a good time to start assembling names of potential subcommittee members.
  • The Zoning Ordinance – We have been talking about cleaning up the mistakes from the last go around for several years. Just taking a section at a time in slow meetings would move this forward.
  • The Dunes – This too will be coming before the Plan Commission as a subdivision request. The planning for this is an important function of the commission.
    • Related to The Dunes, we are about to start the process of establishing the biggest subdivision (that I know of) since Culver established zoning in the 50’s. I don’t know when the last time the Subdivision Ordinance was updated, but it has been more than 20 years. It references old standards and doesn’t include things like the Complete Streets Ordinance, which was passed 4 or 5 years ago.
  • Beste Property – The Planned Unit Development zoning district for these parcels has been undone and the property has gone back to its previous zoning designation, S-1. There has been discussion that there should be a change to this, since the property has been annexed. The property is on the market, so giving some guidance to future buyers would be appropriate.

That’s my short list… With a little thought, I’m sure I could double it, but there are hours and hours that could be spent related to the five thing above.

I give volunteers a lot of respect. I’m not going to come down hard on them for taking a breather. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important things to do.

Another Dalmatian in Culver

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New public art has appeared at the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Ohio Street in the form of a painted fire hydrant. It appeared without any fanfare that I saw, so I’m guessing this wasn’t an approved installation! Ha! While I am not a big fan of the other Dalmatians in Town, this one makes me smile every time I drive by it.

I’m sure there are those out there that consider this defacing public property. That’s probably part of the reason that this was done with no fanfare. I had a former client that was known for saying, “It’s quicker and easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

Back in the day, my mother, Jackye Berger, was part of the Maxinkuckee Jr. Women’s Club (sic?) and as a bicentennial project, they painted many of the fire hydrants in Culver Red, White, and Blue with some of the more artistic members creating versions of Uncle Sam and Founding Fathers. I couldn’t find any original pictures from Culver’s past, but I found the FL version to the right, which is a pretty good representation. Obviously this was part of some national movement. Too bad it lost steam. It resulted in a lot of fire hydrants taking on patrons. Some were kept up for years, but I only know of one that still has the patriotic colors. With the exception of a few red & white ones downtown, the only one I know if that’s still Red, White and Blue is on the Millers Merry Manor property fronting on S.R. 10. (See below)

The Culver Crossroads Committee has an Arts Committee. They are promoting art installations and things such as the various murals going up around Culver. I wonder if this kind of blast from the past could be taken under their purview as public art…

If you know of more decorated hydrants, share them in the comments!

Best Laid Plans… Culver Addition

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The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men… No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”

Culver Garden Court

We were involved with finding a site for Culver Garden Court. It was challenging and we were pleased when Wade McGee stepped up to work with us. Those discussions began around 2010 with Culver Garden Court being completed in 2012. The picture to the right is from the “As-Built” survey of the Culver Garden Court property, dated 2-13-12.

One of the things included in the negotiation was a provision for ongoing and future access to the remainder of Mr. McGee’s property. The quality of PDFs 12 years ago wasn’t what it is now, so this may be a little hard to see. Squint and imagine… I’ll fill in the gaps.

From North to South, Culver Garden Court is across from Tampa Street, an improved alley and Batabano Street. Since we were carving out a new lot and creating a 2 lot subdivision, we set the north property line of Culver Garden Court in line with the centerline of Tampa Street. Then we provided a 50′ wide ingress/egress easement along the north property line. There were extensive discussions with the Plan Commission and Town Council about this. Even though this put the drive of Culver Garden Court off center from Tampa Street, it would be low traffic and not an issues. It was more important to give Mr. McGee the ability to line up with Tampa Street with any future development. The ingress/egress easement would effectively allow Right-of-Way for a future street extension. Until that time, we extended the Culver Garden Court drive to the west property line for Mr. McGee to use for property access.

Given the above, I was a bit surprised to see the plans for The Dunes showing “West Tampa Street” adjacent to the Culver Garden Court Drive. This seems to be the WORST of both worlds. Now we’ll have a misaligned Street right next to a driveway. On those odd occasions where someone is sitting at the West Tampa Street stop sign and someone is sitting waiting to come out of Culver Garden Court… who has the right of way? If they’re turning, they won’t be able to see the signal when it’s on the opposite side of the car. So many issues…

I am not looped in on these things. All I’ve seen is what’s presented in public meetings. The plan to the right is not the current plan, but the most recent plan I saw, presented at the Town Council meeting on August 22nd, still shows the misalignment of Tampa Street.

Image from the last (2014)
Culver Comprehensive Plan

As I’ve stated here before, I don’t particularly have any issues with this project; Towns are either growing or dying, so better to grow. But it is a bit frustrating when the planning of the past is ignored. I don’t fault the developer of The Dunes for this. This is clearly a Town of Culver issue. The extension of Tampa Street needs to be re-evaluated and correct alignment should be pursued. And as stated here, a fix for the South Main Street/Davis Street intersection should be considered. It’s particularly frustrating to be serving on the current comprehensive plan steering committee and see the previous comprehensive plan ignored. (Ignored may be a strong word, since as previously stated, I’m not looped in, but it seems that way.)

Plans are just plans. Plans can and often have to change. That doesn’t mean the time and effort put into past plans should be disregarded without proper consideration.

The Dunes at CRC 8-21-23

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The Culver Redevelopment Commission met last night and there was discussion on The Dunes project. There was a public hearing as they were entering a subrecipient agreement with the Town of Culver. (I always find these things amusing, where the Town Council comes hat-in-hand to request money from the Redevelopment Commission. Ummm… The Town Council are the elected officials that answer to the voters! They appoint the Redevelopment Commission members. If there is any issue with the CRC supporting the TOC, then there should be some reappointments made ASAP! Ha!)

The meeting was a little frustrating as there were no plans or even preliminary plans for The Dunes that they could share. They only shared verbal descriptions of what some of them had seen. The only new information that was shares was: a) The scope has increased to “300 doors” and b) the Town’s commitment to this will be greater than the $1.3MM originally contemplated in the READI grant application. My concern is that we’re getting a long way down the line without knowing what we’re doing. I had to leave the meeting early because of another commitment. I ran into a Town Council member outside who made the comment, “This isn’t like your project where we knew everything up front and knew what we were signing up for.” Well, Yeah!? Why not???

I keep coming back to The Dunes representatives being very careful with their wording. To paraphrase, “The capital contributions from the Town of Culver and READI will reduce the construction costs, but the housing created will be market rate housing.”

Market Rate = What the Market will Bear… I thought that was salient last night as there will be no requirements on the developer regarding costs. The development agreement that kicked off Sand Hill Farm Apartments included several cost controls and included requirements for 12-month leases among other things. It seems they have chosen not to pursue those this time. They (CRC) were even hesitant to use the term work-force housing as they said that it implied that it was subsidized. Ironically, wasn’t the whole reason for this discussion the subsidy they were giving? At the lowest point, the subsidy proposed is $2.6MM made up of $1.3MM from the Town of Culver and $1.3MM from READI.

Sand Hill Farm Apartments

A key point that was emphasized last night was that increasing the number of available housing options should bring down the cost of housing in Culver. Part of the audience’s concern was that the word “should” has been variously substituted with “could” and “ought to” and has included qualifiers like “hopefully”, “theoretically”, “ideally”, etc. This is an experiment.

In general, I am not opposed to The Dunes project and agree with the Town’s premises on increased housing options being needed. The current trends toward Culver having too many “second homes”, probably won’t be stopped by this, but could be affected by it. I am more concerned about my perception of a lack of vision for its effects. I’ve written about some of this before, but to reiterate:

  1. “300 doors” is an interesting term, but I still assume that equates to 300 dwelling units. I don’t believe that South Main Street, as it currently stands, is appropriate as a collector street for this development. I would suggest some of the Town’s contribution go to existing street improvements. If they don’t do it now, it will be required later. (Improvements to the Jefferson Street Corridor were part of the over all consideration for the Sand Hill Farm development.) At a minimum, there should be some increased Right of Way (ROW) for future expansion.
  2. The intersection of Davis Street and South Main Street is poorly designed for the current traffic. Culver may be losing its last chance to fix this if some ROW swap isn’t included in The Dunes plans. At least this may be the last chance to fix it without expensive land acquisition costs.
  3. I understand that our utility infrastructure has been assessed and current capacity will handle this, but it will use most of our current excess capacity. Culver needs some excess capacity in order to be ready for the next opportunity.

I am not one to say we’re moving too fast on this. Time is money and as discussed last week, the numbers being discussed from the READI application are stale as they were put together a year ago. Blame who you like (I have my opinions), but inflation in construction costs is real. I am pleased that the Town has hired financial consultants to make sure the monetary side of this makes sense. I think they are missing a key component by not hiring an urban planning consultant to provide input. This is a major change to the community and all available expertise should be brought into this decision.

Those interested should be at the Town Council meeting tonight where there will be another public hearing on this issue. As the council member I spoke to said, “Bring a cushion…”

Culver Town Council Work Session 8-8-23

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A notice of a Culver Town Council Work Session came out Friday, August 4th, with the agenda listed as, “The Culver Town Council will meet to discuss goals and expectations.”

Since I have been serving on the Steering Committee for the new Culver Comprehensive Plan, I thought this would be of interest and expected there to be a full house. Because of the early time, I tried to listen in on Teams and attempt a bit of multi-tasking. Unfortunately, Teams failed again, with the sound going out about 10 minutes in. I was the only one online and after Karen (Clerk Treasurer) jumped through hoops to try and get it working for me for about 10 minutes, I told her I would just come down to the Town Hall.

I was a little surprised and disappointed when I got there that I ended up being the only one in the audience that wasn’t an elected official or an employee. Later on Karen said she had organized this as somewhat of a bonding meeting for the Council and the new Town Manager, so that made me feel a bit better about the low turnout. That doesn’t really excuse the public (and the candidates for these offices) for not getting involve. It was also an important meeting that received no press coverage…

There were several topics discussed, so I’ll hit the high points and my thoughts on them.

  1. Plan Commission
    • The Building Commissioner was there and there was one Plan Commission (PC) member there, but not for that reason. While everything they discussed was salient, it was slightly off target without plan commission member’s input. They discussed redoing the Zoning Ordinance and things they thought should be fixed. It’s unfortunate they were doing this without the PC members, since the PC already has a list of things on their agenda to fix, mostly based on BZA input. Not bad on the TC’s part, but maybe redundant and in need of input from those dealing with it every month.
    • Redoing the Zoning Ordinance is on the PC’s agenda, but as a general rule, that’s a step taken after a new Comprehensive Plan is adopted, so any recommendations can be incorporated. Not bad to get it started, but it probably should be slow-walked rather than having to do it twice.
    • The Council was mainly talking about delegating redoing the Zoning Ordinance to the Building Commission and one of the Town’s Attorneys. I mean this with no disrespect to either of them, but I think if the Council is willing to put money towards this, which they would have to do with these individuals, they should consider hiring a consultant that can do this. The Attorney alluded to the amount of time required to research ordinances and tie things together. While I’m sure they would do a good job of this, someone or some firm that deals with these things daily would know those things without the research and with a higher level of efficiency.
    • They did discuss prioritizing the current hot button issues, one of these being solar installations and battery installations. They set a goal to finish this well before their 2 year moratorium which is admirable. There are too many local people that have economic concerns tied to this to let it languish.
  2. The Budget and particularly how it related to employee compensation
    • While I know they listen to employees, I wonder if they are getting all the input they need here. They were concerned with the amount of overtime being spent and the need to “fix” that by adding staff where they could. There did not seem to be a lot of pushback on overtime from the employees. Are they sure that it is an issue with them or do they depend on it and look at it as a bonus?
    • It wasn’t clear if they had run the numbers on the cost of new employees vs overtime. If the employees are willing and or looking for overtime, then the break even point needs to be analyzed. Overhead items such as insurance generally don’t go up with overtime, but would with new employees. Likewise, things like training, additional uniforms, additional equipment, etc. come with new employees, but not with overtime for existing employees. How does this shake out? It would be different for different departments.
  3. Personnel
    • There was discussion about salaries and what could be done other than monetary largess that could make the Town of Culver a better place to work. Various inexpensive, but meaningful suggestions were floated for consideration. In the end, they realize that they must be competitive with the surrounding communities. This has become a spiraling competition and will be hard to do.
    • They discussed how to create more interaction between the board and employees. One of those suggestion was to go back to a liaison system where each council member would be responsible for a department. This was nixed because in the past this had created the perception of favoritism. Personally, I was glad to see that dropped since I feel like it undermines the authority of the Town Manager and their legitimate role between the Council and the employees. Particularly with a new Town Manager, that would create a difficult situation to reconcile. (I don’t know how they have the hierarchy set now, but when originally established, employees were to go through the Town Manager to the Council and the Council was to direct the Town Manager through the Council President creating a clear chain of command.)
  4. Combined Fire & EMS
    • A statement was thrown out that Culver is one of only five municipalities in northern Indiana that do not have combined Fire & EMS. Whether that is true or not, there are obvious value points in combined services, ranging from cross training, facility sharing and personnel availability.
    • Personally, I think this makes a lot of sense, but I’ve been involved in these discussions twice in the past in regards to just a shared facility and the conversations have broken down. I don’t think this is a reason to drop the idea, but the challenge needs to be recognized.
    • There was also discussion under this topic of forming a Fire Territory. I think they were wise in a decision to form a subcommittee to research this. Unfortunately, the subcommittee, at least initially, does not include representation from Fire and EMS. I think that would be important in order to achieve buy-in, plus it would add expertise from those in the field.
  5. Comprehensive Plan
    • There was discussion of the Comprehensive Plan and the current timeline. “We are farther along in the process than we were 6 months ago…” The Council remained mostly supportive, which seems appropriate since all of them have participated to at least some degree. I have some concern that this should have been addressed under the Plan Commission again, but regardless of that, it will come to the Council for final approval.
    • There was discussion on extending the extraterritorial boundary (Two Mile Limit) to 2 miles. I was asked to speak on that and discussed the sewer issue and why I thought it was important to gain that control now. Granted, the town would not have to provide that additional sewer for free, but they need to get the extended boundary as part of the negotiation. (They have made this more difficult by implementing their solar moratorium. Property owners are generally already suspect of coming under Culver’s control with a perception of no representation. Mandates such is this one demonstrate potential issues that will make this difficult.)
    • There was discussion on prioritizing the Comp Plan goals based on the public input meetings, i.e. the dots exercise. I thought this was good, but personally I liked what the Council did after the last Comp Plan, where they created an action plan based on those priorities. This led to some focus and was responsible for the Entry Level Housing Committee, pursuing and obtaining some grants, and finally, Culver’s successful Stellar journey.
  6. Common Good
    • Karen expressed the Council to come together for the Common Good. She expressed her concern that the Council had been fractured the past eight months and while they all had Culver’s best interest at heart, they had lost some of the spirit of working together that was achieved under Stellar.
    • Karen expressed concern that if they remained fractured, the new Town Manager would struggle.

All in all this was a good meeting. I would have liked to have seen more participation, but I’m sure it was helpful to the new Town Manager and I’m hopeful that it was a move in the right direction for meeting Karen’s goal of reminding them of their common cause of making Culver better.