Culver

Culver Zoning Revisions

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Steve Gorski, Culver Building Commissioner, has stepped up to the task of updating the Culver Zoning Ordinance. Having served on multiple committees to do this, I know this can be a mind-numbing and somewhat thankless task. This was one of the goals of the 2024 Comp Plan and Mr. Gorski has tackled it. At the last meeting, he presented a lot of the changes and corrections he is proposing. It wasn’t really open to the public for discussion, but was handled as a line-by-line presentation to the commissioners.

For 100% of what he presented, I appreciated what he was trying to do and the clean-up it represented. I think there was 10% that could have been improved by some additional input. My concern with the current approach being taken is two-fold:

  1. Mr. Gorski is the Building Commissioner, so naturally he tends to look at things from the administration and enforcement side of things. While those are relevant and extremely important, it doesn’t always pick up the implementation side that is important to the citizens when they try to comply with the ordinance.
  2. In the past, this has been done by a subcommittee, involving Plan Commission members and members of the public. While Mr. Gorski has a good working relationship with the Plan Commission, it’s harder for the Commissioners to question his suggestions since they are more personal than if they were created by a subcommittee. It’s impossible for one person to do this without it being affected by their personal experience. That is tempered by a committee. (Though this can easily double the time it takes to do this work.)

There is also the factor that Mr. Gorski has only held the position for a couple of years. I’ve written about “Institutional Memory” here before. This applied to more than a few items that he suggested changing. A couple examples just in the category of height restrictions:

  1. In the existing ordinance, there is a restriction that accessory structures in the residential districts have a height limit of 16′. This was added to the ordinance because multiple permits were issued for garages that later had a second floor area remodeled into a second residence, which was not permitted. Mr. Gorski has been questioned multiple times about this and would like it remove it.
  2. In the existing ordinance, the S-1 district allowed accessory structures to have a height of 50′, above the regular height restriction of 35′ in other districts (except A1 – Agriculture). The 50′ limit is there to accommodate grain elevator legs from before there was a separate A1 district. It was left in the ordinance during the last revision so existing farmers in the S-1 weren’t forced to rezone to comply if they added an elevator to their silos.

The ordinance is meant to be somewhat of a living document, so I am by no means saying that these things are written in stone. But the institutional memory of why they are there, could temper the decision to change them.

A couple larger items I struggled with on the changes were:

Image borrowed from the Strong Towns link (Hierarchical Zoning) to the left.
  1. Many of the tweaks, were to address current recurring problems, such a setbacks on small lots. I whole-heartedly agree with the thought process that the ordinance should be changed to reflect the reality of variance being given. Where I struggle with this is in the tweaks being made to setbacks in the R-1 district (as an example) to eliminate current setback issues on existing small lots, without considering how this would affect new lots with the larger lot sizes recommended by the ordinance. If the smaller existing lots are acceptable in R-1, then change the ordinance so new developments mimic the existing. Else, leave them intact as aspirational to what is desired in new construction. Or create new districts and district overlays to accommodate the current needs.
  2. The Comp Plan suggested some major changes in how zoning is handled. In some ways, it suggests moving away from Euclidean Zoning to more Hierarchical Zoning. This wouldn’t have to be done all at once, but could be done in steps or waves. Much of what is currently being fixed reinforces the current Euclidean Zoning. I did bring this up in the public comment section of the agenda and those that seemed to agree with me felt that fixing what we have is a good first step towards this. I hope that’s true since I know sometimes things get busy and major change is hard.

Overall, I commend Mr. Gorski for taking the bull by the horns and moving something forward. I hope the Plan Commission continues to work on this and takes the next steps recommended by the Comp Plan.

Regressive Fees

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We generally talk about taxes being regressive or progressive. The income tax in the U.S. is generally considered a progressive tax system, i.e. the percentage of tax paid on income progressively increases the more you earn. The Top 10% of taxpayers in the U.S. paid 75% of the total income tax paid, while the bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 2.3% of total income tax paid, per the the Tax Foundation. This is opposed to sales tax, that is applied evenly across the board, but takes a larger percentage of a person’s total income, the lower they are on the income scale. While this is debated incessantly (“Billionaires don’t pay their fair share!”), the various governmental fees are rarely factored in.

I discussed this in a post (Deposit Dilemma) last year, when we first opened Riverside Commons Apartments in Plymouth. At that time, Plymouth required a $150 deposit to start water and REMC required a $350 deposit to start electric, for a total of $500. This for an apartment where some residents were paying less than $400 for rent due to their reduced income level. A similar problem has been brought to light in Culver as the Culver Town Council struggles to meet their water service obligations.

There was a Public Hearing for a new water rate ordinance at the Culver Town Council meeting last week. For various reasons, Covid being one of them, Culver has not raised rates in nearly 15 years. Kicking the can down the road has led to somewhat dire straights and they need to do something. Even those opposing specifics of the rate change, me included, acknowledge that some form of rate increase is needed. Because water service is a service, there is no methodology to do progressive billing. Fairness prevails and the rate goes up across the board with no favoritism. Where this falls apart is in the fire protection fees, specifically fees for fire sprinklers.

The State of Indiana requires new apartment buildings to have fire sprinkler systems if they have more than two units. Somewhere in the past, municipalities were advised to charge fees for these. In reality, it is a tax, as a fee would imply there is some service provided. No service is provided beyond providing water at the street, which they would do anyway. Because it’s termed a fee, there is sales tax attached to this, despite no product or service being provided. We can talk about the life safety benefits of a fire sprinkler system to residents and fire fighters another time, but this cost appears to be without merit.

There is no inspection or scheduled inspections, no maintenance, and no record-keeping. The only justification is the cost of bringing water to the site, which the municipality would do anyway. Reasonably, water usage for a fire in a building with sprinkler system would be significantly less than that used to fight a fire using traditional methods, since fire sprinklers generally put out the interior source before the building is engulfed.

The existing fire sprinkler fee is $1,200. The new ordinance proposed a fee increase of 83% to $2,199. Several points on this:

  • The fee is per system, with no adjustment for line size, square footage covered, commercial vs. residential. On a reducing scale of coverage, CabinetWorks pays the same fee as The Cove, which pays the same fee as Sand Hill Farm Apartments, which pays the same fee as one 8 unit building at The Paddocks. Because there are three separate apartment buildings with fire sprinklers at The Paddocks, they pay this fee three times.
  • This fee had little justification before, but the increase is not tied to any increase in service or increase in cost other than the overall cost of the water system. Whether a structure has a fire sprinkler system or not, does not affect that cost.
  • When this fee is applied to residential units, this results in a double hit, since the resident will experience the increased water bill for their water usage and then a second hit for the fire sprinkler fee. This may come as a rent increase for apartments or a HOA assessment for condos.
  • Because this is labeled a fee, Sales Tax gets layered onto this, further increasing the burden.
  • This unintentionally targets the most vulnerable. Renters often fall on the lower end of the income spectrum, so this fee is extremely regressive, hitting those least able to pay.

The Town Council did listen and delayed a vote on this. (Much Appreciated!) The Town Manager said he would do more research into this. I will be interested to hear the background on how this fee was set and whether there is an option for more fair and equitable sharing of costs.

Happy Little Trees…

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It’s too bad that maintaining urban trees isn’t as easy as Bob Ross painting them… They take a lot of work and planning. There are occasional “Happy Little Accidents”, but they don’t always workout so well over time…

I took advantage of Emerson Wells’ office hours a couple of weeks ago and met with her to talk about Culver’s trees. Ms. Wells attends Indiana University and is part of the McKinney Climate Fellows program. It was an interesting discussion. I learned a bit about why Culver is working with her and hopefully contributed a little history and insight from another perspective.

One of Culver’s best aesthetic features is its abundance of mature street trees. Unfortunately, a limited budget has made if difficult to start replacement trees for when the existing trees age out. Then there’s the issue of the indiscriminate butchering of existing trees by utility companies. Ms. Wells is working with the Culver Tree Commission to do some tree canopy analysis, some targeting of tree needs and a maintenance plan to help make sure new planting thrive and older trees are preserved. It was interesting to hear that she was allowed to expand the program, working with the Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Council, to provide insight on lake shore trees outside town limits too.

After that meeting, I heard from Kevin Danti, Culver Town Manager, that there was some consideration to planting some of this year’s trees on the two Culver Sand Hill Farm properties, Sand Hill Farm Apartments and The Paddocks. I let him know I would be interested in participating. For that reason, I also attended the July meeting of the Culver Tree Commission to hear a little more about their plans.

Culver Tree Commission with Ms Emerson Wells

Despite being a serial meeting attendee, this was only the second or third time I’ve attended a Tree Commission meeting. (It’s been a while as the group is nearly all new members since my last visit!) It was interesting to hear some of their plans and their approaches to things. The Commission is a working group that not only makes the decisions at meetings, but also shoulders some of the installation and maintenance involved with municipal trees. There is some hope that a working subcommittee might be formed to help them. Ms. Wells suggested that she could bring in some people to help with training. I was also pleased to hear that they are going to do the paperwork to re-establish Culver as a Tree City USA community. Apparently, Culver meets all the standards and just neglected to do the paperwork to maintain that status sometime in the past.

The main suggestion I gave Ms. Wells was to consider plantings on the town’s property at the NE corner of Davis and Ohio Streets. This is the new well location and adding some environmental protection there would be good. Plus there are some storm water drainage problems in that area that would benefit from removing some of the impervious surface on that site. Since I couldn’t talk the town into improving the South Main Street/Davis Street intersection with a traffic circle, making it more aesthetically pleasing would be a fall back position. It won’t provide the same safety improvements, but such is life…

Fingers-crossed that Ms. and the Tree Commission are able to do all they hope to do. I think the plans will be a benefit to Culver. Having a plan for the future and not just this year is a big step in the right direction.

More Targeting…

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Following up on last week, “Targeting” in the pre-Dunes era of the Town of Culver (TOC) should be considered for local businesses as well as new residents. While there have been a few suggestions floated regarding new businesses, the needs of an increased population should be reviewed by all existing businesses too.

TOC has seen many businesses come and go. On the recreation and entertainment side, TOC has lost bike shops, pool halls, bowling alleys, arcades, theaters, lake tour boats and if you want to go way, way back, dance halls and roller-skating rinks. Most recently in this category, we lost the pottery making shop and the axe throwing venue.

On the services side, TOC no longer has bait shops, clothing stores, shoe stores, dry cleaners, furniture stores, appliance stores, flooring stores, lumber yards, a taxi service or a place to rent a tuxedo. At one time there were several car dealerships and while TOC has retained one car mechanic, there used to be five or more as part of full-service gas stations.

I can quickly name the locations of eight full-service gas stations that served Culver all in the same era. That’s not something that is applicable anymore anywhere. That’s not just a TOC thing. Some of the others listed above fall into that same category. Some of these things have also been absorbed into other businesses. The question is, what are the needs of TOC’s expanding community and how should they be addressed?

I know there is some surveying planned to help address this, but who gets surveyed and how is important. I am not suggesting that the surveying be too targeted, but I am suggesting that some of the surveying be weighted. I would guess there would be a difference in what full-time residents say and what part-time residents say. Part of the key is including question on why part-time residents remain part-time residents.

Group 1 – Full-time Residents: This group has stuck with TOC, either from inertia, job ties, family ties or general fealty to Culver. What would make their lives better?

Group 2 – Full-time Residents – Community High School kids: When they think of Culver, why are they considering leaving or staying and are the reasons things that TOC can affect?

Group 3 – Culver Academy Students: How do they see the town? What’s missing? What’s great? What would make them consider returning here after graduation or after college?

Group 4 – Full-time Residents – Formerly Summer Only: Some of these people lived in Indianapolis or Chicago and bought their Culver home as a summer get-away, but now live here full-time. Why? What brought them to make Culver their home and what do they miss now that they’re here that differs from when it was just a get-away?

Group 5 – Pandemic Escapists: TOC missed a huge opportunity during the pandemic of 2020. There were a significant number of lake cottages that were part-time residences before the pandemic that became full-time residences during the pandemic. Culver was their place to escape to… What could TOC have done to keep those people here? If they were called back to work, that’s not something solvable, but if they were remote working and could continue to remote work, what sent them home in lieu of making TOC home?

Group 6 – Realtors: TOC has a plethora of realtors, either based in Culver or working Culver from surrounding communities. No doubt they hear a lot about why someone is considering moving here and what they see as the pros and cons.

There was a business subcommittee created as part of Culver Crossroads. (Remember Culver Crossroads? Another positive initiative that lost momentum when key people exited.) That subcommittee brought in Alan Steele from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in South Bend. An analysis at that time really only named one missing element in our area, which was a sporting good store. That was 3+ years ago and without considering 300 additional residents. What would be different now? SBDC could possibly help with analyzing survey data to identify targeted opportunities.

Some of the potential needs could be added to existing businesses, whether as added offerings or actual stores within a store. (An example of this was the ice cream shop, which was popular, but not viable. Ice cream was added to Culver Coffee Company’s offerings, which seems to be doing well.)  Along with helping existing businesses identify the upcoming needs, TOC could assist with marketing. Most of the TOC marketing being done in the past few years has been geared towards bringing in tourist business, but marketing existing businesses, Welcome Wagon style, to new residents could be helpful. This was done to some extent when The Paddocks opened, but there would be the opportunity to do this with The Dunes as well.

Where needs are identified, TOC could help with micro loans. This would be a way of helping businesses prepare to meet the needs foreseen in the surveys. TOC could also consider waiving some of the fees associated with expanding an existing business. Waive permit fees for expansions, new signage and other sundry costs.

As I’ve observed in the past, Culver can be quick to pass judgement on new businesses they don’t like. How about instead of complaining, be proactive and recruit (target) what is desirable?

Targeting

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The Town of Culver (TOC) and the developer at The Dunes have mostly stated that the project is like the movie Field of Dreams. To paraphrase the movie, “If you build it, they will come.” (The original movie line is, “If you build it, he will come.”) I have no grounds to dispute that, nor to dispute TOC’s hope that adding additional housing options will lower costs in Culver. But do we have to just hope “they” are who we want?

At the last Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC) meeting, the developer had an request before the commission, asking for the release of the next tranche of bond money to begin the next phase. Citing strong interest, they felt the need to get started on an additional 70 units. Several inciteful questions were asked by audience members that were not well addressed by the commission. One stood out to me that I wanted to address here: “Are you targeting who you want to live there?”

In a round-a-bout way, TOC has a goal that these new residents be full-time residents. There is a move to get the “Papa’s to Pinder’s” business district in shape to serve these new residents, but it’s not moving too quickly. That is definitely an important piece. As was brought up at the meeting, can Park ‘n Shop serve the additional residents? Should TOC be talking to CVS about the potential extra need and whether an onsite pharmacist would be justified again? The commission members didn’t have good answers. Hopefully, there is more going on behind the scenes that wasn’t ready for public discourse or alternatively, the discussion sparked some additional goals to strive for.

But the main thing I think is missing is targeting who TOC wants to populate those new homes. Left to their own devices, the developer has only one goal (as he should to satisfy his investors): fill the units as quickly as possible with the residents that will pay the most to be there. The project is somewhat insular by design, turning the back side of homes and apartments toward South Main Street, rather than embracing the existing neighborhoods. TOC will have to make the effort to reach out and make those residents part of the community. Wouldn’t that be easier to do if that welcoming hand were extended before they moved in?

There is a new battery plant under construction in St. Joseph County. There is a new distribution center under construction in Elkhart County. There is a new truck factory going into Kosciusko County. Driving to those sites from Culver seems like a long distance, but compared to living in a larger city, the commute time would be similar, but the drive would be more pleasant! Worst case, if commute distance is too long, those people will still be looking for housing and likely push some existing residents in those counties to look elsewhere. Culver has some nice amenities to offer, if they are promoted. Per the recent UWMC Housing Matters study, Marshall County has a housing deficit of 1,300 dwelling units.

This seems like an area where TOC should be proactive; soon, rather than taking a wait-and-see approach. If nothing is done, I believe the developer will get those homes rented. There is no strong impetus for them to care whether they are rented to full-time residents or not. If TOC does not want more part-time summer residences, part-time Culver Academies‘ parent residences and part-time overflow from lake house residents, then they will need to make an effort to attract who they want.