Comprehensive Plan

Affordable Housing Task Force

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The Affordable Housing Task Force met on Monday the 27th to discuss the information Jonathan Leist, Culver Town Manager, had assembled through various meetings.  I attended four of the six meetings he reported on and was able to help fill in background.  In a nutshell, there are opportunities and developers that can be enticed to do work.

In a MCEDC site visit with Elkay, we were able to recruit Elkay’s management to assist us in our endeavors.  Two Elkay representatives attended the Monday meeting and brought demographics for our use.  They also volunteered to help with surveying to determine how many Elkay employees would be interested in relocating to Culver if housing were made available.

In the meeting with IHCDA, we learned that funds are available, but only for income based housing projects, not market based housing.  We did find that much of the projected income based rental rates are actually above the local market rate rents.

The Task Force agreed that it would be prudent to pursue both market based and income based housing to keep our options open.  The group tasked Jonathan to take a couple of things before the Town Council:  1)  A budget for a Needs Assessment Survey and 2)  A tentative agreement to consider tax abatement for the properties.  (Tax Abatement was requested by all of the developers Jonathan met.)  Jonathan accomplished #2 at last night’s Council meeting, but #1 was not approved as it would require an additional appropriation for the unbudgeted cost.

Image Source:  www.homeloanstoday.com

 

Attacking TIF’s

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A friend sent me a link to this article from Inside Indiana Business.  The article cites a Ball State University brief titled, “Some Economic Effects of Tax Increment Financing in Indiana“, which postulates, per the article, that the overall effect of TIF districts in a community is negligible in the creation of economic development because it is just a function of moving development from one area (outside the TIF) to another (inside the TIF) at the expense of taxpayers outside the TIF.  If you’re really interested in this, I would suggest you follow the link to the full “brief” as there is a lot more information there than what has been condensed into the article.

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Affordable Housing Update

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Culver took a step forward with their Affordable Housing Task Force on Wednesday March 11th.  Representatives from the Town Council, Redevelopment Commission, Plan Commission, Public Schools, Culver Academies and MCEDC met at the library to discuss the issues and goals regarding affordable housing.  With the exception of two with staff positions, all were volunteers from the community stepping up to try and make things better.

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Culver Comp Plan Implementation Meeting

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As a partial rebuttal to my own post yesterday, I attended the Culver Comprehensive Plan Implementation Meeting on Tuesday night.  This meeting was held at the Depot and was part of Houseal Lavigne‘s contract for preparing the Comprehensive Plan.  Several of us on the initial comprehensive plan steering committee requested that this be included in hopes that the seed would be planted with Town officials on why the plan needs to be a reference document and not something just completed and set aside on a shelf.

Here’s the partial rebuttal part…  The Town Council, Plan Commission, Redevelopment Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals as well as the original Steering Committee were requested to attend.  Drumroll please…  4 0f 5 Town Council members were there, 4 of 9 Plan Commission members were there, 3 of 5 Redevelopment Commission members were there and 2 of 5 Board of Zoning Appeal members were there.  For Culver, that’s a damn fine turnout!  It’s a partial rebuttal because this was the regular night for the Plan Commission and they also had a plat review on their agenda.  There shouldn’t have been any issue getting a quorum there on their regular night!

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Too Tired to Fight About it Further…

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Tired.  Just tired.  At the August 19th Plan Commission Meeting there was more discussion and a vote on revisions to the Zoning Ordinance regarding Wind Energy Conversion Systems (WECS).  Type in “WECS” in the search box to the right to see past posts on this subject including the definition per the Culver Zoning Ordinance.  It was obvious that the Plan Commission members were whipped on this issue, as was I.  This is one that I really wish they had employed an outside consultant on.  I feel that they got bogged down on details as they focused on specific WECS’s rather than making general rules that could be applied to all systems.  So be it.

Culver’s Zoning Boundary:  The pink area shows the current extended territorial authority. The loop outside that shows the approximate limits if the Two Mile area was granted.

The main concession they made to the crowd was broadening the “protected” area, i.e., no vertical WECS’s within 2,500 feet of the L1, P1, R1, R2, C1 or C2 Zoning Districts.  This extends the ban well outside the annexed area of town and effectively bans them from our current Extended Territorial Authority in several directions.  I understand why they did this considering the vocal minority and their influence on the Town Council, but I’m afraid that this will kill our chances of achieving an expansion of our Extended Territorial Authority.  I will beat this poor dead horse one  more time here with another example:

Wherever this new restriction extends past our current Extended Territorial Authority it has no effect, i.e., if our Extended Territorial Authority is only 1,500 feet from one of the “protected” zoning districts, the additional 1,000 feet has no effect because it is in land governed by the County’s Zoning Ordinance, not Culver’s.  My feeling is that anything like this… things that add restrictions that currently do not affect land within the County’s jurisdiction…  will make it difficult if not impossible to extend our authority to include that area.  Many outside the jurisdiction will fight any attempt to extend Culver’s jurisdiction just on principle.  Why give them ammunition for the battle?

What many in the audience fail to understand about the above scenario is that there are other issues that will affect them.  While we tried to mimic the County’s A-1 district when we created Culver’s, there are things there that are allowed by Special Use Permit.  This means that they have to come before the BZA for approval.  If those requests are under Culver’s Extended Territorial Authority, they come to Culver’s BZA.  If they are under the County’s jurisdiction, they go to the County.  The property owners within Culver’s jurisdiction may not even be notified, let alone have local representation.

I don’t know if I will speak to this further at the public hearing.  I respect the Plan Commission and their attempts to accommodate all inspite of themselves.  And we’re all tired…  Just tired…

Picture source:  LolSnaps.Org