Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, folks. I'd like you to call with me to order, please, so stand up and recite the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The next item is roll call. Roll call.

Thank you. Any correspondence at this time? No, but I would like to start the meeting. We have a new member in our school, Eric McDonald, who's appointed by the commissioners to take part in the marketplace with the BCA. Eric and I have met a couple times, tried to get him up to speed, and I don't think we could have picked a better attempt than him first. Eric, maybe you could tell us a little bit about your

Eric McDonald, live in Morgan Township, wife, two kids that go to Morgan, senior and eighth grade to be. Just looking to serve Porter County and help out where I can. Appreciate any advice, any assistance, anything like that going forward and look forward to being a part of the planning commission. Welcome aboard. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Okay, we have one case, case ZO-2026-13.

Applicant is Michael Shinkowski. Location is lots 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Also lots 24 and 26. Parcel number 64-10-07-127-001 period 000-003 in Hayden Manor subdivision. on Bernson Beach Road, Valparaiso, in Center Township. Zonings are for multiple family residential district. Acreage is 1.38. Request to rezone seven lots to REL residential lake district to allow for construction of one single family detached home. You wanna read the rules of conduct?

Conduct adherence. Public hearing before the commission, the petitioner and proponent will first present the arguments and submit the case. Those who oppose the petitioner shall follow. The petitioner shall have rebuttal and shall be within the discretion of the committee to oppose any type of petition, either to deter the respondent and to limit public comment. It is determined by state statute to be entrusted to parties. Written remonstrances shall be accepted by the committee to be read into the commission's record. This, then, concludes the public hearing. To maintain orderly procedure, the site shall proceed without interruption by the . In presentation of the case, the burden shall be upon the petitioner to supply all the information necessary for understanding the problem. Commission may continue hearing when, in its judgment, the petitioner has not provided sufficient evidence on which Every person appearing before the commission shall abide by the order and direction of the president. The courteous disorderly or contemptuous conduct shall be restarted as a breach of the privileges of the commission and shall be dealt with in the rest.

Thank you. Michael, come up to the table, please, and state your name and address first.

Thank you. My name is Evan Satosky. I'm representing Michael Satosky with my brother, Sam Satosky. I currently reside at 7 Edinburgh Court, Valparaiso, Indiana. I live at 1204 Campbell Street, Valparaiso, Indiana. Thank you. So we are here tonight in absence of my father, and we are seeking RL zoning for the property along Burlington Beach Road, along John Street and Charles Street. As you said, it's currently zoned as R4 multifamily, and we need RL single family because all surrounding property is RL zoned, and it'll also be the primary residence of my father. Currently, he has approval from Valparaiso City Utilities to connect a water service to the existing water main, and he also has approval from the Conservancy District to connect a sanitary sewer service to the sanitary gravity sewer that runs, I believe, on Burlington Beach Road.

Okay. And you're going to construct one house?

Correct. It'll be one house, his primary residence that he will.

Okay. All right.

It's a public hearing. Anybody want to speak in favor of this case? Yes. Also, I have a Tim McDowell. Are you for or against it? We have a microphone there, so state your name and address first and your comments.

Tim McDonald, 4202 John Street. I'm happy that they're going to a single family. because there were footings poured 25 years ago maybe for multifamily, you know, and I was happy to see that you're going with a single family. The only concern I have is And it's really not maybe a stormwater issue. It is the drainage. You know, if you guys ever go out there during the rain, you will know, you know, we call that the swamp next to my, you know, next to my, because it completely floods. You know, we've got that retaining pond there. There needs to be something over the years. I've complained about it, you know, but I've worked for the county. I'm not sure if it's... county highway department for stormwater you know i i'm going to make an appointment with the engineer martin uh to see what he says but something needs to be done where it goes from there retained over to the stamp pipe there to Beach and John Street. You know, if you're going to have a water issue, if that isn't looked at at some point, whether you go to storm water and look at it, you know. Over the years, I've had different engineers with the county look at that because all the drainage comes from Flat Lake School. It's that way. It goes down. And his backyard, my backyard. And that heads to Flint Lake School or Flint Lake. It always floods.

Okay.

Thank you. All right. But I'm happy to see that.

Okay. Thanks for coming. Ma'am.

I live at 4205 Charles Street, so my property is right next door to the door property on Charles Street. I also am going single family. I'm curious as to where you plan to build it, which is Charles Street, Burlington, or East Street.

No. Okay, we will answer those questions at the end.

Okay.

Okay.

My other point also was the flooding. Just so you know, that creek floods every time it rains. Floods my property, floods your property, floods their property.

Thank you. Thank you. Sir, you had a hand. You're fine? Okay. Turning back over to you to answer those items. Okay. Okay.

Sam, I'll answer the water question, because I'm actually a water civil engineer. So that falls in my bulb.

So my father's been in construction and dealing with flooding issues for about 30 years, and I have experience with water.

We'll go through the proper hoops to... make sure that the flooding is not an issue. Sorry. Make sure the flooding issue is gone. And whether that be putting new storm inlets in, drain tile, fixing the grading in the area, we will make sure that that isn't an issue anymore for the surrounding properties, as well as the developed property that my father would develop. Okay. All right.

Did he tell you which one? I believe he's looking to build on the lot closest to Charles Street. Okay.

So which way the house face, I think?

It would face out onto Charles Street. The drive would be coming off of Charles Street.

Okay. All right. Does anybody have anything new? Any new questions? Seeing none, I'm going to close the public hearing. Ed Red, you're on first.

Mr. President, staff could make a comment first.

Yeah, sure.

First, I'd like to say there's a little confusion, and I apologize for the air. When I said the preemptive petition of the fund, we discussed, it is our surrounding. I'll illustrate. Where you see in blue, that's this gentleman. It's got seven lots to it. It's one person. That'll be something when you make a motion. So, where it shows our core map, if some of your studious of the UNO are more multi-family, this is your primary building, et cetera, like that. Mr. Sapkowski came in and said he wanted to put a single-family residential, and we discussed a couple choices he could make. Our L is prevalent throughout the area. And RL, by my recollection, these RL nations appeared in the lakes . Kevin's probably got the most of the history of all this, but my interpretation of when they did the zoning back They had to deal with these lots. There's a lot of cabin lots, summer homes, small lot, real tight set, et cetera, like that. So I'm guessing either in 07 or in pre-dating 07, they created the special zoning to cover these areas, these two specific lakes, North Valvo, areas where they utilize it because they both have common themes. When we met with the petitioner, I thought we discussed making it hard which would bring it to more standards. It's got an adequate lease on its lot and everything like that. Unfortunately, we submitted a postage RL, and I didn't catch that. So for the record, I want that to be set. Some of the bigger differences, the really big difference between R1 and RL is the lot coverage. One, the smaller lot coverage versus the other, which could then lead into stormwater and other things. It's not necessarily that bad. I think the R1 requires a smaller lot that corrects it.

No, the residential lake, because it was designed for smaller existing lake lots, it allows a 60% lot coverage total. single family residential are one allow 35 lot coverage we looked at some side yard setbacks and things and there's some minor differences or little differences really aren't the meat and potato of the difference in zoning it's the lot coverage because we anticipated small lots and to make it work buildable they got up to 60 percent I think staff and I think it's an important point because we are dealing with an area that's had a history of drainage problems. And the maximum plot coverage being the only issue in between an RL and an R1 zoning to take into consideration on a motion to recommend or not recommend that to the commission.

The last few points would be something in the motion of the discussion. Combining all seven blocks into one large block. It's already one parcel, one parcel, but it's seven smaller blocks. So, as a matter of fact, it looks like one of the buildings over next to it. That probably should be straightened up. And then lastly, in the staff report, petitioner also dedicated public right away I was left with the understanding that John Street on the west border and Charles Street on the east border were private. I was told that maybe their comments will be able to verify that. But I would like you to maybe any public street that they run to

Yeah, well, just about that in general, because I guess my question is, you're saying so it was publicized as RL.

not our one. That's correct.

Can we actually then make that change now or since the notices went out? You know, granted, it sounds like, you know, in a sense, it's more harmful to them that they can't cover as much as the law and most people are going to be happy with that. But can we do that change? Or I hate to say this, does it have to get reposted?

It doesn't. I think it's been applied for the residential zoning. I think the Planning Commission can make a favorable or a disfavorable. If they make a favorable, I think they can request that a written commitment be they don't exceed 35% lot coverage.

So I guess I'm confused. So we would actually be then requesting the RL, not R1?

No, they're requesting to be turned into RL.

Okay. And we would just say we want you to do the coverage as if an R1.

Correct.

Okay.

So we don't have to republish. We can handle it at tonight's meeting. Okay.

Just wanted to make sure.

And to be clear, the reason why staff was requesting internal parcel lines be in the rezone were to be approved. In addition to that, so that then we have one parcel to deal with, one clean zone, and it's much easier to deal with in the future.

I got a quick question. Would stormwater be involved in this?

When they go to build, they would have to turn it. to what limit they're doing, depending on what they're doing, they would have to subject themselves to that. And correct me if I'm wrong, you're not saying you're going to do it, but you could subdivide this lot again sometime in the future, correct?

Yes.

And I think that's even more of the reason for the lot coverage as well. It kind of protects the interest as far as stormwater. And I don't think it's an undue burden.

Red? Now that we have all that figured out, looking at the picture here, if you're facing Charles, it looks to me like you're going to be using approximately two out of the seven lots anyway, so it looks like about 30% of the... I don't even think whether you're R1 or RL is going to make a difference because you can only build on two out of the seven lots. But I don't have a problem making a motion for R1. I love it. I think it's great. I think you have your water sewer figured out. It's going to be your dance primary residence. The drain is going to get figured out, which is going to help everybody else out for the future. I love it. Thank you.

Eric?

Eric?

Yeah, I agree with Red. Building on 6 and 7, exiting to Charles. Neighbors are happy with it. That's all I got.

Very good. Okay. Kevin?

Thank you. Mike, could you turn on the layer for wetlands? I just wanted to point out that that was euphemistically called Emerald Pond. back about 30, 40 years ago is when I think they first proposed to do this R4, and it was not well received at all by the neighborhood. Understandably, it was going to be a large structure, a lot of parking, and they had enough issues out there. And it's turned out right after they put in the foundation, the developer actually put concrete foundations in there. Which want to make sure get all removed. I'm not sure if they're still there very under dirt or where they're at. Okay, I thought they were but But that's something you have to watch. You're going to have to As you deal with the subdivision process or site plan anyway. I'll need to set aside. some kind of protections, sir.

Are you talking about the concrete foundation on the southernmost part of the lot?

Is that... Where the previous developer was trying to... I don't know if that was a fourplex or an eightplex. It was going to be a big building. But it had everybody up in arms. It literally was right across this wetland area. That's how extreme that was. It was poorly... And I think he started maybe even as early as four years ago. I like the idea of doing it at the residential lake, so it's similar to the rest. But I do think we need to watch our log coverage. for this. Also, I agree with Mike. We need to make sure that we dedicate right away. It's the only opportunity we have as a government unit to make sure that we can maintain the roads, the ditches, and the utilities along the plot just for the betterment of the community at large. So I appreciate what you're doing, and I understand you're going to be using another relative, possibly Ken Satosky as a contractor. Yeah, that would be my dad's brother. He's very knowledgeable about how to handle these things, so I'm pretty optimistic that your families will improve this area because there are so many issues historically. So it'll make a difference. That's it.

Kevin, you have a good memory. I remember the foundations, the footers. They're still there.

I can still hear people in my ear. That's why I wanted you to say that.

Nikki?

I am okay whether it's R1 or RL. The only thing I actually went ahead and pulled up RL versus R1 And the permitted use is just because I was curious. And the only thing that I will point out, just because I know how things are going with homesteading and realize that is not permitted in RL, homesteading or hobby farms, where it is in R1. That is the only other realization I just want to make sure you're aware of. So you cannot, under RL, do farmstead hobby farming. whereas you cannot or not want to. And like I said, that's just because the way my job is. I know that a lot of people want to do vegetable fruit stands sometimes if they've got enough land. I'm not sure if you can. I'm not sure is where I'm going to put it to you. Good point.

Pam?

I'm good as long as we consolidate the months into one person.

Okay. All right. Commissioner?

Yeah, I'm good as long as they combine the lots as well to one parcel and the drainage issues concerns. It sounds to me that there's a lot of drainage issues. Also, I think that the easement also needs to be included.

What was that? Right away. Right away.

Right.

The right away dedication.

But other than that, I mean, it seems to me that it's going to be something better than what it was originally planned to be. Again, as long as it's combined into one parcel and the drainage is addressed. And I'd imagine the lot coverage would be addressed once the site plan is presented, if you make that a condition.

I don't have any other questions. Okay. No, I'm fine with that. I have no questions. Very good.

I really... Oh, I'm sorry. I really don't have any questions, but my one thing is, could they down the road go back and cut off lot 24 and 25? But they would have to come back for us to do that. We can sell that lot.

We can make them open that they don't subdivide, right? No.

Okay, I just want to... No, we can't.

I thought Mike just said we could. But they would have... Oh, I thought that...

They would have to come back for us.

They would. Okay, then I'm good.

I'm fine.

You have another question? Mr. Bretzky answered my question. Sorry, Mike, but yeah.

Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion that we approve case Z. Recommend? Recommend, yes. We're recommending to the county commissioners case Z02026-13 for Michael Satosky. Recommend approval. Contingent on they're planning this as one parcel and combining all the parcels There's a benefit tax wise for you and also be wise so Combine them all dedicate the right-of-ways for the public roads around it and At the very least you need to have Burlington Beach Road dedicated for 40 foot of right-of-way for our master plan and and also not to exceed 35% lot coverage. Kevin, if we could correct your motion.

It's combining parcels. There's already one parcel. Well, combining lots, yes. Thank you.

I second that motion. We have a motion and a second. Okay. Valid vote.

You were talking. I didn't want to distract you while you were making your beautiful motion. I was trying to not distract you from making the motion.

I did have one.

In the matter of case ZO2026-13. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Will that date be? Do you have a date for commissioner meeting? That would be. Give me a second. You have to do this one more time.

That would be August 4th, 10 a.m.

Thank you. Okay, guys. You're good. Thank you. Thank you. The next item reports update. Michael? On the plan.

Update on the comprehensive plan. All of you sitting at that table today should receive... 10 days or more ago, a copy of the F2.0 comprehensive plan, land use, the third portion, still kind of in progress. A thoroughfare plan is still being recognized, but pretty much the meat and potatoes and the comp plans and the land use. We got some comments from some of your members here sitting here tonight. If anybody wants to look at it, keep in mind, this is the document that's going to guide us from that. You know, it's supposed to be a visit looking out, say, 20 years. It's supposed to guide some things. There's some pretty interesting stuff in there. It's a view from the previous council for land use. It was done in 2001. One of the comments that staff made to the consultant is to better introduce the document, what it is, what it does, and how to use this document. We gave some strong language to put in front of that document. This should be a document that lay people, such as many of you sitting here today can understand that it is such an important document. Last, I think there was a bunch of other comments, but one of the other comments, I think we need to revisit the 2001. guidance on certain key things to do, such as including denser development in cities and towns. In 2001, the reason for that was that we could take the pressure off farmland because we said we want preservation of farmland as much as we could. So we also asked them to be a little more sharp on some of these recommendations toward So they got comments from the steering committee, maybe a third steering committee gave comments. I've talked to a lot of you, talked to the commissioners, some of you gave verbal comments. Those were all forwarded too. Consultant team, though, they're spending their time addressing all of those. We're going to have another meeting review in probably a week or so. And then thorough plan, fair plan. We're doing something a little different than that in that we're also clipping a lot of the horizons, the pathways we've got going. Some of the major pathways like the KT train and some other ones. It's not like we're... We're also trying to create, from a county perspective, some of these trails that cover a large expanse and connect things like parks to points of interest, et cetera, like that.

Mike, if we're going to do trails, too, we need a document to support the grants, particularly with the highway funds that are used for building trails. This is a supporting document if anybody has questions. recommendations or want to see a trail in a particular place, we really need to have this in order for them to score high number points. Right. And that's why I brought it up. And that's one of the reasons why we've been able to, or been successful in working with the trail. Exactly. Get them to build it. Exactly.

So this is draft 2.0. Staff wrote the draft 1.0. You all can change it to 2.0. Draft 3.0 will be for public comment. So as soon as we wrap up this public with the comments for 2.0, we're going to start advertising the footnotes in the paper and we'll post it on the website. The document will be available online. It will be available in our office for people touch up his paper, read it, and we'll have like a three-week comment period for the residents and businesses to come in and comment on the plan. And we'll take all of his comments, see if they fit in a place or change anything, republish it, and then we'll have a document. I'm going to guess you'll probably see that come about September or October, October at the latest. It'll come to the planning commission. We'll have a public hearing. Mike, I got an email Thursday night, I think, and I went to print it up. I figured I'll just read it this weekend and I just left the printer going.

It was very small because it was printing on smaller paper. 11 by 17, I think, is what it's set for. So I had issues printing it, and I've got a lot of... Is there a way to get regular letter-sized pages for the PDF, or...

I'll talk to the consultant. The reason it's published on 11 by 17 is because of the way it's coming from.

I get that, but when I'm You know, I couldn't see it on the screen, so I tried to print it.

And anyone can see it. I got a full copy of it printed.

I brought part of it. A lot of paper.

That's all I got. The next item is a little presentation to make clear. This is . HEA 1001, this is the bill for Alice and I to Indianapolis last winter . We testified before that . We're standing committees. They changed the bill drastically. I need not go into detail, but they took a lot of control away from us when it comes to housing. So now it's enrolled. It's titled Housing Matters. It's a bunch of things all the counties, cities, and towns have to do by January 27th. It's, as you see there, identified for housing development. They want us to look at things such as zoning. They want us to look at our standards of residential uses and affordability. And then we've got to prepare a report a minute before 2-8. And after that, 2027, end of every year, and then it'd be a report on how many that were applied, how many that did, et cetera, like that. The key thing is this year what we got to do is public hearing. So here in summary is all compliance requirements. So by January 1st, we got three things to do. Review our zoning, subdivision ordinances, and evaluate our housing care standards. We have obstacles in order to encourage housing. Then we conduct a public hearing. Have people come in. We'll probably do that. Make sure it's a light agenda. Then we have to take everything and summarize all our notes and actions that we might take and send those to those two agencies. And then after that, we've got to do the same with housing. So the roles in all this, the planning commission, you're going to conduct a public hearing. You're going to charge staff to review some of the subdivision standards, see if we've got any findings or recommendations, and tell us to do a final report. So the commissioners are going to provide policy oversight and go through the planning. Thank you. to approve any ordinance amendments if we decide to do it. There's no deadline, I think, I interpret, that we can get those done by. And then just monitoring, making sure we've applied all the things that the Pledge has given back. And then staff, you know, we're going to be doing a lot of coordinating all the stuff, making our own . Doing all the reporting, scheduling all the hearings, and everything else like that. Pretty much got our work cut out for us for the rest. So, in summary, this workflow just in four phases. First, we interpret the preparation. Putting all that together. Prep for the public hearing. We'll be relying on a county attorney to help certain matters as well. So phase three will conduct the public, be advertised well in advance. And lastly, the report submit. So kind of oversimplified it, but I got a flow sheet. It's got sub-elements, it's about four or five pages long. You know, steps, you know, that I hope to do to kind of guide you through this. And this is proposing time. Certainly by, I hope by mid-September, staff will get all the internal preparation done. And we start advertising to the public hearing. Maybe we can shave a little time off, make sure the public hearing maybe is held on COVID. There's more time to get the back of the court. And then through December of 2026, we want to see the report at this point. But my intention, though, Staff is also going to take account of that planning and those target dates. Otherwise, we're going to have all special meetings. And customarily, in November and December, we only have one cover bucket to do at the first part. We'll definitely consider that as well. So that, in a nutshell, is what we've got to do. If you've got any questions or comments,

It's a good plan. It's a good plan. I'm impressed. It's a good plan.

Mike, how much time is this going to take your staff? It's not going to affect people building houses and getting their reviews done and getting them done in a timely manner, right? I hope not.

We do have a staff. It's a contract. We'll be retasking soon. And he's pretty much done with the studio. We're starting to look at coding. But I think I'll retask him to work on this. Okay. All right.

I just want to make sure that the people that want to build a house don't have any undue delays because we're dealing with HE, you know, 1001, you know, in their infinite wisdom.

Well, I was at a meeting a couple weeks ago on this power. arguing his case, I thought we were kind of done with this. But as a statute, it didn't get through because he had beat down a bill, Miller himself had beat down a bill of a senator based on home rule. And the senator came back and said, I'm not voting for this because it violates home rule. So here we are. Is this really just more a house rule?

Well, the bill agreed. Okay. proposed, I'm sure Commissioner Morales has a lot to say about it, because he and I went down there and testified, but this is a part of what it was. Because at the national level and at the state level, in some local communities, as a matter of fact, I was at a nursing community, a land use group, We're talking about housing. There's some really stark data out there that's showing that at the lower levels of income, there is a vast shortage of housing units for them. And then at the high level, believe it or not, there's a shortage as well. And in the middle, they seem to be – they have a shortage, but they're not as short as the two extreme ends. And studies have also shown that people in the middle income levels, they're locking in and staying in their houses. You know, the tradition, you buy the house, you get married, you buy the house, you raise your family, you buy the house, you retire.

What's happened is people, studies have shown people in the middle income,

So that means people are lower and can't move up into the used housing stock. And right now, the way I see it is that you've got the shortage for people that got the money to buy it. There's not enough of it that's out there for them.

And it's built.

And I think that was a lot to do with monetary policy of keeping rates artificially low at two point seven five percent, because now who's going to move out of the House at seven percent? I mean, it's just that's just how that's just how it is. But I'm sure the Indiana legislature will fix that. Well, along with illegal immigration that I just heard. putting a burden on housing, which I have 8 million new people come in. What are they going to do? They have to have housing. There's lots of things I'm sure the Indiana State Legislature is going to fix with this.

You think he's going to come back and make a proposal?

Well, I find it funny that you have people like BlackRock, big companies. It's just crazy to me, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist. You have these big companies buying rental houses, tracts of rental houses, and then they get bills passed nationally. They're getting bills passed through the state. And it's just, man, I would imagine, was that gentleman a home builder? Miller? Yeah, home builder. Yeah, so I mean, how self-serving can you be?

We have a lot of, we have a real strong home builder lobby there because many of them are home.

Right. Oh, I know because I think we actually had a, we used to have, used to have a one acre for a septic and then didn't that get cut down to like a half acre or something crazy like that?

Because I think they put it back.

Did they put it, but for a while there, didn't they change it by testing?

Yeah.

Yeah. It varies with the source. Yeah.

Yeah, just stay local. That's all I can tell you.

I mean, this bill was a lot worse than its original form, you know, and it goes back to the same thing that we keep hearing with a lot of these different bills. You know, you either fix it or we're going to fix it for you. So they're giving us the opportunity to look over our own standards, whatever that might be, and put something together. I mean, that's the way I interpret it. But the original bill, you had no say whatsoever.

And that should scare all of us. Yeah.

Put something where, let's say, multifamily use where we don't have utilities, you know, but none of that was considered, you know, because you have you have people with interest now who are writing these bills. So, you know, that's the way I saw it. And the compromise to this was, you know, again, the original bill was was horrible. So this was the compromise, what you're seeing. Like I said, it goes back to most of what we've heard and what we've seen in other bills. You know, they give you the ultimatum, listen, you fixed it. You know, whatever that may be, we have to appear or we'll fix it for you. So we looked at it as somewhat of a compromise, and this is the result of it, what we have to go through. Again, we can't control. you know, commodity prices. You know, I don't understand that when it comes to home building and the price of affordable housing because, you know, we can't control the cost of what it takes to build a home. You know, those things change every day. But somewhere, you know, they have this, you know, fascination that we can to some degree.

It troubles me there's so many facets to home building. Sure. Different types of financial pockets. Yeah. And You have to have all of them in sync in order to make this. And none of that's going to happen.

And then again, with the low interest rates, nobody is going to get out of the 2.75% mortgage. Why would you add another $1,000, $1,500 on your mortgage to move into a smaller house? I mean, that's crazy to me, but I'm just a councilman.

The first is... 92 counties. And if you look at, someone said it's the top 20. I say it's more the top 10. And if you look at the population growth and the activity, by and large, it's currently top 10 counties. That's really a privilege to be in. They are the places people want to live. If you go to a county that's much more I don't want to take on the county or anything because they don't have a big metropolitan community in them. They may have less than a handful of new building permits they would hold for the entire county. This bill isn't going to affect them as much. They can create all the rules they want. It's really not going to affect them that much. You know what it's going to have to do? It's going to be an entire county, a county, an entire county. That group wants this bill is going to have a big effect because that's the place people want to be, okay? Schools, shopping, bookings, location, location, whatever you want to call it. So, Porter County is going to be under pressure because the state's going to monitor. Now, elected officials could change next year. Maybe it's a different game. But Porter County is an attractive place to be. And the county can't bear all the burden of all of that because you need utilities. And if you look at our conflict, it's a map that the staff kind of put together to talk to a bunch of people. Not to say it's the only place it's going to occur, but if you look at that map carefully, it shows different areas of our housing where it could occur that maybe that could be a more dense divide. Why? Because it's outside some of the cities and towns that have utilities or it's near a conservancy that has more utilities. Those are the things we've got to do. We did that in mind. We did the comp. We kind of vetted a lot of that information. The question is how do we apply it in principle. But we can't ignore this because they're going to pick on us if we don't do it. I've talked to other communities. They haven't thought of this stuff.

Well, I applaud you for doing this because I think what they want to do is make sure out of 92 counties, if, you know, some of them don't do it, then they're going to say, see, there's a problem here. So now we have to legislatively do it because you guys won't, you know, take care of it yourself. So I think by doing this and going through, in my opinion, this exercise and, you know, some good things. might come from it too, right? We might see a couple of things. I know years back, I had heard that there was always a problem, you know, submitting for a house. It would take a long time, yada, yada. But I've heard in the last couple of years from home builders saying they thought the process is getting expedited a lot faster and they're actually happy with how the county's, you know, doing things. So I think anytime we can do that customer service wise, it's always a good thing.

When Commissioner Rallis and I were testifying, one takeaway, many takeaways, but one takeaway in the test was people that were in favor of the bill in its original form, you know, saying affordable housing, they were trying to say it's municipalities that are creating expensive housing for deli people. And that's not true. Portability is a very complex solution. It's the cost of materials. It's the cost of labor. It's the interest rates and everything else like that. But the legislature is trying to control, take control, say, well, you guys, you're not going to charge those fees. You're going to expedite those. You're going to allow this to happen, right? That was their solution, which I think was the alternative.

Sure, because that costs money. You know, just because you want to lower the building fees or whatever they may be, which I didn't see many that were high, you know, because they had other counties that I give an example of permits and whatnot. But you're still putting a burden on the planning commission and the planning. You know, those employees have to take up that time. That costs money, you know, and again, We're going to put this together, but the things that really affect this, the interest rates, the commodities, costs, we can't control that. So unless, you know, so we can go through this exercise, it's still going to be up to developers to see if they can still build it at the cost that makes it equitable for them. Will it solve anything? I don't know, but I mean, it's an exercise we're going to have to perform.

So if anybody's got a question or they want to talk further, please send me an email. I'll give

And, Mike, just to bring up, I don't know if we have a meeting since our last subcommittee meeting, but, you know, it says review zoning and subdivision standards. We went over a lot of things, I thought, at that little subcommittee meeting that we had problems with. I think we got pretty far in that meeting.

And the subcommittee will. I didn't get a report on them, but we're going to meet again soon. I'm going to be giving stuff in advance to read so we can dialogue at the subcommittee.

So... So we're doing it internally anyways, quite frankly.

We are.

We just got to go through the hoops of doing this on paper and submitting it.

Well, and to get to the fundamental, we're redoing it now after 20-some years. I think there's still a lot of communities that have no comprehensive plan or unified development ordinance. They have basic planning and zoning, but that's just not useful if you're trying to grow you know, this building economy or even the commercial industrial base that we really desperately need.

But it's interesting, Kevin, in the last 18 months, Porter, Chester, Portage, Fountain Ridge, Porter County, and one of the communities have all got new houses. So the communities in Porter County are up in here.

We're pretty disciplined here. That's it, Michael. That's it.

Anybody else have anything? Motion to move. Second. Good for you.

You came out strong. I did. You came out strong.

I'm glad I could contribute. Everything was perfect. You guys did exactly what I wanted you to do. I was happy with your performance. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks, Adam.