City Council - Regular Meeting

here tonight to give you just a quick overview of the 2026 legislation uh update. Um so um I think first and foremost I wanted to touch on House Bill 1001. If you recall uh this introduced version uh essentially stripped local governments of local planning authority. It permitted uh several uses by right uh single family dwellings and town homes, accessory dwellings within single family dwellings, affordable housing, uh prohibited parking space requirements, it prohibited regulation of design elements. It required residential uh multifamily to be permitted permitted use in commercial. It prohibited a unit from imposing requirements on lot sizes, density setbacks, building uh bulk on certain lots or parcels. And there were several of these that were opt out provisions. Uh but all in all, it was uh really chipping away at local authority and um home rules. It was focused on affordable housing. I think the intent was there. Um but maybe just not um the the right way to get there. After um a lot of effort on the part of Mayor Fadness and several mayors across the state and our friends over at AIM, um we end up getting a much better version. This is the adopted version that I will go through tonight. So if you uh I just wanted to mention that because if you hear House Bill 101 and um it has changed significantly from the introduced version. So I think our biggest impact will be impact fees that we uh have on new developments. And essentially if you have um any impact fees that you want to collect after June 30th, there's a new process that you have to go through in order to impose those fees. Uh this does not affect an impact fee that was imposed under our um current ordinance and not collected by the city before July 1st. But if we do

intend to collect um impose and collect impact fees after June 30th, uh we do have to go through a little bit uh different process. Um the and one of the things that we'll have to do is impose a impact fee zone. And so I think this was a big change that we're looking at. So the um current statutory scheme is your impact fees can be collected from new development and then based on your impact zoning or your impact um your impact fee plan. You can uh put those fees anywhere within the city according to that plan. So you may have a new development on the east side and uh collect you know road and bridge impact fees but you're looking at like the holistic traffic pattern. So those might may not be imposed directly adjacent to that development. It may be at a different intersection. Um but now uh they've kind of uh limited those down. So you have to establish an impact fee zone that uh there's a functional relationship between the components of the infrastructure type and the impact zone. The infrastructure type provides a reasonably uniform benefit throughout the zone. All areas are contiguous. uh the impact zone is continuous to the new development co- terminus with utility service or distribution line that may be necessary for the new development and then uh it has to be located not more than five miles from the road or drainage infrastructure. So, um, all that to say, if if we do go through the new process and we do impose and collect new impact fees after June 30th, the road and drainage impact fees have to be used within five miles of, uh, wherever that fee is collected. Uh, the next change, u, again, if you look through the lens of affordable housing and housing concerns throughout the state, uh, this is where, uh, some of these changes came into play. So, beginning January 1st of 2027, the city

will be required to submit two annual reports to the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority and the executive director of LSA. Those reports are uh basically the housing that's been approved and denied in the city. There's a whole list of things that we'll have to report, but it essentially wants to know what's been submitted, what have you approved, what have you denied. Um, and then also, uh, just the general housing and rent prices throughout the city. So they're just trying to keep track of, you know, what what's going on in each part of the state. Um, we do have some limits on building and construction fees. So, beginning January 1st of 2027, the city cannot assess a fee in an amount that is more than reasonably necessary to cover the cost of processing the application, inspecting, and reviewing the plans, preparing detailed statements for the applicant. I'll be honest, most of our fees are like this anyway. I, you know, home rule tells us we can't collect a profit on these fees, so this really isn't a huge change. Uh but if we do have any fees that were adopted prior to January 1st of 20 27, we can only increase them once every five years. So um if if we want to uh increase those fees more uh frequently, then we have to bring it to city council for a public hearing. So not a big deal, but you know, a little bit of change from what we're used to. Uh any fee that's assessed and collected must be maintained in a special fee dedicated solely to reimbursing the costs actually incurred by the city. So, um you know that is a little bit of a limitation to what we usually see. Usually these go in the general fund and they are spent um however the general fund is uh usually spent. But here they're looking for a special fee for reimbursement. Um and as of January 1st of 2027, if a person files a complete application for a permit or approval, it must be granted if the project satisfies the legal restrictions including zoning ordinance, zone maps, subdivision control ordinance that's in effect. I don't think need the plan commission anymore.

Uh we certainly do need the plan commission. Uh we have um you know a lot of projects that get submitted that aren't directly uh fitting within a certain uh zoning district, but you know, occasionally you do get developments or um requests that fit neatly into like an R1 or an R2. Um so those would not be going to plan commission, but again they'd have to fit pretty neatly into that category. Um but as you know we get a ton of um you know uh developments and plans that are submitted that you know we need an exception here variance there conditions something like that. So definitely still need plan commission definitely still need BZA.

So what uh we'll still have PUDS you can still uh have a PUD um it would operate essentially the same as it does now. um if that development doesn't fit neatly within a certain zoning classification, we can certainly do a PUD with that base zoning and then the conditions um or requirements on top of that like we do other PUBS.

And Brad, I'm going to jump in real fast. Um so with that reszones, I mean, if if somebody has a reszone, it will obviously still go to plan commission. We're still allowed to go to PUB committee and talk about architecture and site plans. All of that's still allowed under this. It's just building suspenders. Um to Lindsay's point, if there is something that is cut and dry where there isn't this extra level of discretion that we've built into PU PUB, um that's where they obviously have and we're making sure that all of our UDO um standards, our permitting processes are correct so that we're getting the best possible projects, but we don't anticipate any sort of issues with our process or projects that we're reviewing. as a result of this one.

So PD would still have to come from uh if they were reszoning to a PD. Yes, they would. If it's R5, they go build R5. If it is zoned R5 currently and there is not a reszone to a different if it's not P for it, then yes, they they can do that.

Yeah, that's a great point. Um I think most of the things we see come through need some kind of adjustment, resone. um some kind of condition or variance. Um okay, so uh the statute also requires a UDO review by January 1st of 2027. And basically the goal of this is to increase housing development using the following factors. As you can see, uh there are many there, but essentially trying to get back at that affordable housing piece. Uh so you will probably be seeing that before January 1st of 2027. Uh the um general assembly would like to see, you know, more uh high density constructing other types of housings, including accessory dwelling units, uh adaptive reuse of commercial buildings, increasing the allowable floor area ratio and multi-ousing or multif family housing projects, waving or eliminating certain requirements and regulations, uh reviewing impact fee zones for improvements, um streamlining or shortening the permitting process and timelines. Um, this one was interesting because I did watch several of the committee videos um, whenever they were hearing this and they really did uh, hammer in on, you know, what are the current municipal processes? How quickly can you get through the process? And, um, they were really asking a lot of questions of the communities that came and testified. Uh, you know, what how if I come in with a permit today, when will it get approved? So, um, you know, they're looking again at that affordable housing streamline approach. So, um, moving on. Oh, go ahead.

At the bottom, does it say donating vacant land? Yes. Um, so again, these are not requirements necessarily. These are things that they want to see in the UDO. So, um, nobody is going to come in and say, "Oh, you have a piece of vacant land, you must donate it. affordable housing where you must uh zone it for affordable housing development but they would like to see these elements within the UDO and there is um a report that we have to submit to the state to ensure that these um things have been included. So I'm assuming that we're going to opt out. You want to keep going? I'll wait till you finish. That's okay. No. Um we're asking about the opt out. So yes, I'm assuming we're going to prepare opt outs for those.

There's um no opt out anymore. Um that was no opt out. So, initially it was more of a mandatory requirement unless you opted out. Um, and it basically stripped the planning department um of all of its functions. Here it's saying we want to see these in the UDO. Um but you know the UDO is more of a I mean it is a prescriptive document but um there's not an opt out on uh the UDO changes whereas before uh we just would not have been able to do it unless we opted out. So let's talk about the Swiss cheese holes that we have here in Fisers.

What's going to happen right? I mean, you know, most of that stuff is zoned R2 to my memory. Yeah. So, what are they going to be able to do or not do without coming before planning commission and the council? Yeah. So, if they are able to, you know, build within their R2 permitted uses, then there would be no council action. There'd be no plane commission action. But most of the Swiss cheese areas um as we've seen are zoned R2. But then uh there's other uses that you know people usually have in mind for those. So they do come before us for reson.

No. So the jurisdiction and the um the zoning agreement that we have in place, we're still through the city. Um we have that agreement that we're still the zoning authority. So nothing changes in our approach. Um they're still subject to whatever their current zoning is unless they come before us for a reason at which And we would then say that you need to annex into the city just like we do in our standard process. Yes. Yes. So let's take a look at a real world situation. So we have the church along 116th Street, right? That has been talked about and then the whole swath of land that sits next to Lake Stone Bridge.

Tell me what can go on there with this law. I think it's uh R2 is what it's zoned right now. Okay. So, a development that would meet our R2 standards is what could go on there. So, um part yeah, part of it R2 and then part of it is part of the Spy Glass Hills um beauty. So, they come back and they want to reszone, right? Because they want to put 17 duplexes in there and we have the ability to say no, we're not going to reszone it. Correct. We do still have the ability.

Now, the church property, I'm sure, is not zoned R2. That's the PUB R for Spy Glass Hills or I'm sorry, that's part of the Lake Stonebridge PU. Okay. So, that would come underneath their standards under that PU. They would have to Yep. And if they deviated from that, then it would have to come back to council as a where are the areas that would be most susceptible to using 101 in this fashion. I think we can do an analysis of that that we need to do. Yeah, we need to understand where those areas are. Yeah.

You know, again, you my worry is that we have a lot of those holes around the city, right? And I think primarily most of them are are R2 zoned. So if you're telling me we don't have to deviate from our UDL on the R2, we still have some protections there. We do, right? Which is good. Um because there are some of those areas which are right next to next to Cynth.

I agree with that. It's not inside of a a PUB. It's not inside of an HOA. not all those things I I worry about, right? Because you've got a number of neighborhoods where people have spent a lot of money building and buying homes and doing those things and and basically what this law continued to say to me when I was watching it go through was that we don't really care about what your neighbors think. Okay, we want to put in affordable housing. Now, that sounds great in principle, but in reality, right, I don't know how that really benefits any municipality, right, when you're forced hand to do things. So, I think definitely we need to get an analysis of what properties are suspect. Sure.

Right. So, we can judge that because that's something we're going to have to know. And the good thing is that the work that was done from I think like the earlier version that um Lindsay walked through was great but from the version that we have today and what changes we actually have to make um there's nothing allowed by right. So before ADUs were allowed by right by right you could have two um you could put it in the front yard too by you could put a front yard. Yep. So the up to three stories high or something like that. Yeah. And all of that is gone now. So, um, from where we are and where this bill stands today, there really isn't much of an impact to us other than a couple of additional reports and then the impact fee zones that we have to do.

So, that's that's another one of those items that that kind of gets me with the impact fee zone, right? We've used the impact fee zone to really continue to build out the city in a first class manner because regardless of where you live in the city, you're going to use services around the city. That's just a fact. Okay? And particularly, you know, with the drainage and and all the rest of that stuff that goes on there in the roads and the park impact fees is another big one, right? You may not have a park in that particular five mile zone. Although it probably do, but you know, then you can only use it on that particular park or that stretch because I'm going to tell you, they're going to put a burden on every road we have in the city if we add more people. They're going to put a burden on the drainage. They're going to put a burden on wastewater. They're going to put a burden on everything that goes through there. and and our wastewater plants clear on the other side of the city. Okay. So, they're not going to be within five miles of anything by most of the city standard. So, that's a concern to me as well, right?

I get it. You guys get paid the big bucks, though. So, I'm not worried about that, Elliot. So, you I'm pretty sure you guys are smart enough to figure that part out. But I mean again, you know, it really kind of handcuffs us to growth the way we want to have growth around the city and and to really continue to bring first class product and first class amenities to that. You know, we've been very careful with the housing developments we've done and the other developments we've done to protect our schools, right? We look at at at donor properties rather than recipient properties. And that was by choice. you know, really the citizens were all for that as well. So again, you're starting to take the hands out of that which can potentially affect the schools at the 1% property tax cap, right, to become recipients rather than donors. And you know, you start putting in these three and four bedroomedroom multi-unit developments, right, is is problematic where we don't have a say that it actually fits really where it belongs in the city. And again, I think we've been very effective where we put in some some, you know, affordable housing. I mean, Rhonda had a project down on whatever it was over there. We've got two projects. One was a senior project. We got a number of other areas where we've had that done successfully, but that was planned.

Yeah. And I think big picture, the goal of this, they use affordable housing a little bit differently than what we think about of like attainable or workforce housing. And it was more so about the cost of building building a home and making that more affordable for the a homeowner to purchase. But um big picture, I know that Lindsay has other things that she has to get through too. We'll definitely come back with an analysis of what properties are on annex and R2 and what that could look like from a zoning perspective. But I feel confident today that the work that some of the work that we're doing now with the UDO update that's coming forward tonight, our constant um review of our procedures and projects that are coming through, we're not at an eminent risk of some development being allowed by right that impacts um our residents.

Well, the other side is I don't understand how the legislature feels they can just handle economics of the building trade. Okay. Then get get the electricians to take less money. Get the manufacturers are making those product to take less money. I mean again you know I work for an industry that you know we're designing stuff that's getting built all the time. It's not getting cheaper folks. It's done. You know they keep talking about raising up everybody's pay which is great right but that is then going to pull down into those other communities. I'm not very sure they come up with an answer here but that's just me. If I have a house that's a big lot and I'm zoned. Can I build another house? Well, a builder coming in with brand new land.

They would still have to subdivide it. So, they would still have to parcel it off and that would have to then go through this process for you to be you could build% of your home right behind your home. No, that's not an old version. Megan, if you did the analysis, can you include like a price per in fisers because to your point about the affordability the the price of the land is still very high because we don't have very much of it and I think anything that goes toward affordability is not really going to happen because the price of the bill in in addition to the price of the

so basically what we would need is state money to come in and offset the cost of some of the land to build right for the for developers to build that. They've been really good about doing that. Yeah. Yeah. or you really and then also at the same time you want affordable housing so we're going to open that up which okay well now we're also going to kill the rental cap so who's going to buy the affordable housing the out of state investors are going to come in and I mean it's yeah so tee that up afterwards at the state house the insanity continues back it's good stuff

of house bill 101 I think it's a continuing conversation at the state I think you're going to see changes next legislative session. Um I think you're going to probably see uh summer study committee. I don't think the conversation's over and um most of the points that were discussed tonight were also discussed at the state house. Um so I'd say stay tuned for next session. Um okay, moving on to House Bill 104. This is uh insurance for public safety employees. So essentially, if you have a public safety employee that has been disabled and has a class one or class two impairment, they are eligible for group health insurance coverage as well as their spouses and dependents. They are that is the change in the statute that the spouses and dependents are now eligible for healthcare insurance or health Yeah, thank you. Healthcare insurance. Um, and essentially this is really targeted to those uh public safety employees that have catastrophic injuries are no longer able to work. Spouses are no longer able to work because they're caring for uh the injured public safety person or their children. And so there's nobody working to provide insurance. But um it does open up some of our insurance for uh the the people after uh January 1st of 2020 that have received class one or class two impairments. So just wanted to make you aware of that. And it's not indefinite coverage. Once the spouse is eligible for Medicare or when uh health insurance becomes available to them through employment, then they're no longer eligible to be on our insurance. And same with dependents. Their coverage ends when they turn 18 or 23 if they're in college or if they have um health care insurance through their um employer or they become eligible for Medicare. Um so House Bill 1210, this was the uh very large Department of Local Government Finance bill. Um Elliot, do you want to talk a little bit about the

uh financial impacts of this one?

Yeah, absolutely. So uh previous legislative session, Senate Bill One was the big topic, right? And so what happened in this session is it just kicked the can down the road one year. So instead of being effective 2028, it's now going to be effective 2029. So our LIT distribution uh will stay the same for the uh next couple years until it uh uh it transitions to 29. At that point in time, uh the council will adopt an income tax rate up to 1.2%. So we got a little bit of time before we have to really dive into that in detail. Uh couple of things from uh the DGF bill. So the previous legislative session uh there's 3% additional hotel tourism tax. So six seven 8% of that uh it was split between the four uh major cities in Hamilton County. The last percent was uh up for grabs so to speak. So we could reach out uh to uh Hamilton County Tourism uh and request funding for a capital project for that 1%. We got away uh from that. So now that 3% is divvied up between the four major cities in Hamilton County. So instead of uh the financial impact to you guys is instead of receiving about $670,000 from that next year we should anticipate receiving about a million dollars towards that. That'll always go directly towards our fishers event center debt service payment. So about $330,000 additional uh coming uh every year in the future because of that. And the last one uh I'll kick back with you for registration, Lindsay.

Yeah. So, uh, initially we had language that, uh, completely abolished our rental registration program and the rental cap. Uh, we do we did have some language included at the very end that allowed us to enforce it until January 1st of 2028. So, we have a couple of years um, you know, hopefully we can go back up and show the positive impacts that we've had from the rental cap and um, you know, maybe get some additional language added one of these legislative sessions. Uh, we will still have the rental registration program after January 1st of 2028. we just won't be able to enforce the cap piece. Um, just want to touch real quick on uh, Haley's law. This isn't necessarily affecting city council, but um, Haley's law was enacted. It uh, was two bills. House Bill 1303 which included high-risisk missing children now under the Silver Alert and then House Bill 1408 which uh requires social media providers uh to determine if a user is under 16 and if they are they have to get parent or legal guardian permission before creating the account. Parent can uh create restrictions on who the minor can talk to and who can find the minor's account. The social media provider can't track the minor's age for the purpose of recommending content or ads. There's restriction of certain features that are considered addictive like continual scrolling. Uh social media providers must try to continuously monitor the age of the users using reasonable efforts and if the minors lied about their age then they can warn and then delete the account. And the attorney general has jurisdiction to sue social media sites for violations of this law.

You know, you know what's interesting about that? I I was out in the community and I met a family whose son was on a video game and got into that vicious cycle with a predator. And I think what this bill needs to say is that people who are over 18 need to identify themselves so that everybody knows that they're not talking to a child. They're putting a lot on families and people under 16 to identify themselves instead of putting the shoe on the other foot and making adults who are in these um these groups and these games who are there specifically to interact with miners. They need make them identify themselves. Yeah, that's a great point.

Well, maybe we'll have some more changes uh coming up. Uh so, uh Senate Bill 179, this is our local road funding. So, uh for the fiscal year 2026, they increased the matching grant amount from 100 million to 175 million. Uh eligible projects are road rehab, bridge repair, sidewalk improvements. Um this grant for us is a one to one grant or 5050. So, uh, we put in a million, they would match a million. Um, it was interesting because usually there's an open call for these applications. Um, in, uh, the fall open call, they had decreased the funding. So, not as many applicants were approved. Um, approximately 200 municipalities actually applied in the fall and did not get funding. So with this additional funding, INDOT is reaching out to those municipalities who had applications who were not uh granted the money um and then allowing them to resubmit their application. We are still waiting on our call, but hopefully we'll get it and we have a road resurfacing project ready to go whenever we do. Uh just want to touch base on uh Senate Bill 270. This actually doesn't affect us, but I did get some questions on it. Um the intent is to identify townships that are struggling with administration finances or finding trustees. They put together a point system that's based on financial reporting, budgeting, uh election gaps, operational spending, and uh you accumulate as a township, you would accumulate um points. And if you get four more points, then you must merge with the city if at least 80% of the township's boundaries coincide with the the city's boundaries and 51% of the population reside within the city boundaries. All this to say Delaware Township and Fall Creek Township would not fall into this. Um they would not be considered a distressed township. My next slide, really bad news. Official state sandwich did not pass through the house. Uh so we do not yet have our official state sandwich, but

maybe next year. So the only I go back to the rental cap thing, Lindsay, and I would argue at bare minimum having a rental registry is still a positive thing for the community. Absolutely. And I don't believe the institutional investors can even argue that point. It allows us to know who to contact.

Okay. Because obviously the people living in the residence don't own it. But we need proper channels to do that. So if I were to argue anything, so you're not going to do a cap because they're not going to let us, right? But the rental registry, which Again, when I was talking to at least one group who was doing the lobbying against it to me, when they talked to me, they didn't have any problem with the registry. So, I think we should at minimum go back and ask that that would be okay. Yes, that that piece um will be okay. It's a totally different statute that's been in existence for several years. It's actually a registration and inspection program, right?

Um so, you know, intent is to keep that going as well. So good. Our intent is that we're proceeding for the next two years while we're allowed to have the cap put in place. Um but then that the registration would be continue continue as well. Thank you. Yeah. To your point, we do need good contact information for the for all the owners um for property maintenance um reasons. Um and it has been helpful to have those contacts and when they're not paying the sewer bills and everything else. Right. Right. Okay. All right. All right. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any questions for Lindsay? Well, thank you so much. We'll adjourn the work session and jump right in. Right. Good evening. I will now call the March 16th, 2026 city council