- I'd like to call to order this meeting of the city of Bloomington Plant Commission for August 11th recording in progress Start by giving just a brief overview of our agenda this evening we Have several petitions that continue to be tabled including SP 24-22 Cutters Kirkwood 1 2 3 LLC zio 34-23
- which is some text amendments from the city of Bloomington planning and transportation and zero zero one dash 25 also text amendments from the city planning. Those remain tabled tonight. We will hear two petitions tonight that were forwarded to a second hearing from our previous meeting. Those are zero zero three dash 25.
- And zeo 18-25 both of which are text amendments to the udio that we'll hear in full tonight We probably have a few things housekeeping to do before we get to those petitions But let's begin by just calling the roll to make sure we've got quorum here tonight And right Randolph here Ballard here Burrell here seaborg here
- Korotky here Holmes. Yeah, Kenzie here Smith here Whistler here All right. We do have a quorum. So we will continue on through our agenda here First of all, we do have some minutes to be approved. I think we have minutes from our July 14th meeting are there any questions or comments or corrections to the July 14th minutes
- If not, do we have a motion to approve? Move to approve All right Do we need we don't have any remote members tonight Dewey so we can do Voice vote on on these so let's let's just approve these by voice vote all in favor of approving the July 14th minutes say aye Any opposed nay I will abstain since I was not
- President for that meeting I can't tell you whether that was I'm sorry, but two abstains Three you're abstaining as well Okay, so we have The eyes carry it with three is abstentions. So that is approved the minutes are approved and
- All right. Do we have any reports resolutions or communications from commissioners? Any from staff tonight? I just want to make one quick communication. I noticed in the, in the packet tonight, we, we have a list of plan commission members or at least a partial list of plan commission members. Um, I think I was left off the list, but, uh, uh, maybe that's because I wasn't at the last meeting, but, um, if that's going to be a,
- Normal thing going forward. Just wanted to point out The omission there All right, anything else before we get to our petitions We good. Okay, let's start with zero zero three dash 25 It looks like Eric Grulick is going to be our case manager on both of these so take it away Eric and
- Thank you. This is a request from the city. This is a part of several amendments to the use table. This is the second hearing for some of those.
- Amendments we heard some of those amendments at the July hearing five of those were approved from the Planning Commission to go to the City Council And we're actually recently Introduced so this is the second hearing for two of the petitions that the Planning Commission voted to hear again So tonight we will be hearing petitions regarding single-room occupancy and that's case zio-03-25 And then a second petition for changes to the use table regarding urban agriculture commercial
- Petition ZO 18-25. So we'll start tonight with the first one regarding single room occupancy. And this was initiated from a resolution from the Common Council directing the Planning Commission to prepare new language within the UDO to address a land use to be known as single room occupancy. There were several
- aspects within their resolution that they wanted the Planning Commission to take into consideration. Those are outlined in the resolution and included in the packet as well as shown on the screen. So in general, the goals of the resolution were to allow for this land use that would be characterized by a facility that has shared common spaces, shared kitchens, shared bathrooms, shared living area, and individual sleeping rooms. The council wanted the Planning Commission to take into
- not requiring owner occupancy for SROs. So there was a current land use in the UDO known as residential rooming house that was very similar to the use single room occupancy but it did have a requirement for owner occupancy and the council as part of the resolution wanted to remove that specific component. They wanted to allow these within residential neighborhoods and ideally require or allow these as permitted uses.
- The staff as well as planning commission last time has been doing a lot of research on these uses coming up with some standards that would be applicable or possibly be incorporated in this. Certainly single room occupancies are something that you see in a lot of communities. Typically they're involved with buildings that are hotels that want to be converted into apartments. Occasionally these are purpose built facilities.
- However, one of the challenges that we found in researching other community standards is most of the time these uses were not being incorporated within established residential neighborhoods. You would see this use happening in commercial areas, multifamily areas, but it was not common to find legislation that dealt with these in single family neighborhoods. So that was one of our challenges as we came forward with legislation for this. Also obviously with this being a community that is highly occupied by rentals,
- for students. We had to be very careful and mindful not to make legislation that was just going to be an avenue for increased occupancy for student rentals throughout the community. So there were certainly a lot of challenges that we dealt with as we were coming forward with this. So what we were proposing
- And I'll step through just some of the slight changes that have happened since the last hearing in July. We are still proposing that this be treated as a conditional use in the R1, R2, R3, and R4 districts and permitted uses in all of the other districts. And there are use-specific requirements or restrictions that go along with this. So on the screen now is the language that was heard in July. So in July, we had proposed a three-bedroom limitation in the R1 and
- two district and a five bedroom limitation in the R three and R four district. We had some language in regards to occupancy that tried to fold in the current language within the U D. O. For the definition of family in regards to the treatment of individuals that are all related, whether by blood or marriage or foster parent responsibility. Um,
- So we've modified that language a little bit in the language that was heard in July. There was a component that restricted the presence of bathrooms within each bedroom. This language was there in there because very often as we are reviewing building plans and floor plans for purpose built student housing in every situation we see bedrooms that have bathrooms directly access from that. So we are trying to filter out that particular element.
- The other language that has stayed the same though is as part of the conditional use approval, there would be a 150 foot buffer that would be created around each approved SRO where another one cannot be approved within a two year time. In addition, if the owner of the property or their hand registered agent had a violation within the past three years, they would not be eligible for the conditional use approval within the single family neighborhoods. So that was the language that was heard in July.
- Since then, responding to a lot of the comments that we heard from the community at that meeting, we've changed some of the language in the proposed legislation. And so what we have tonight, and I'll just kind of step through each of these individually and point out the things that have changed. So we are still proposing a maximum bedroom limitation within the unit, within the single-family districts, R1, R2, R3, and R4. A maximum of five bedrooms are allowed within that unit.
- other districts would not have a maximum number of bedrooms a maximum of just two adults per bedroom is the proposed language so this was a slight modification from what I mentioned earlier about folding in some of the language from the definition of family so this language with the maximum of two adults per bedroom would not regulate children it was advised from the legal department not to regulate or attempt to regulate children as this can possibly infringe on some of the rights from the Fair Housing Act so
- We have not folded in any language for that in regards to children. There is still the language regarding the 150 foot buffer that would be created as part of the conditional use approval. The language regarding the no notice is a violation within the past three years is still part of this. So we did change one of the aspects for the next one here regarding the ownership of the property.
- As I mentioned at the first hearing, we heard a lot of support from members of the community that they could be in favor of this legislation if there was a component requiring owner occupancy. So we wanted to.
- Respect that. And so we folded in language here that says within the R1 R2 R3 and R4 districts the owner of their property must live within the dwelling unit or be a registered nonprofit. That would give a path for certain nonprofit organizations that do try to specialize in this type of housing to allow for them to create these uses.
- There is still the same language regarding the design of an SRO to be compatible with surrounding properties for situations where they come forward for a conditional use approval in the R1, R2, R3, and R4 districts. So those three changes in regards to the five bedrooms that are allowed per unit to adults per bedroom and then that the owner has to live there or be a registered nonprofit are the only changes of substantial amount that have happened
- There was a slight change in the definition of
- single room occupancy, just to change the wording from a residential facility where individuals rent individual rooms and share common facilities such as kitchen, we changed that to including kitchen, bathrooms, and common area to make it clear that you do still have to have those common area components. This was a change resulting from taking out the language regarding the every bedroom is restricted from having a bathroom. You know, certainly there might be situations where a sink or a toilet
- To some degree might be component within the bedroom, but there should still be a shared common bedroom or shared common bathroom within the facility So just a small change to the definition of single-room occupancy There are a few other references to residential rooming houses that would be changed simply a name change for single-room occupancy
- So just a few other house cleaning within the UDO as a result of that name change. So with that we are recommending that the planning that the planning commission forward this to the common council with a favorable recommendation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Eric are there any questions from commissioners for staff commissioner and Randolph. Yes. I'm mine.
- First, I don't mind sharing my opinion, and I'll just state, since I wasn't here, I did watch the last meeting. I am a non-voting member to the Planning Commission, appointed from the Monroe County Planning Commission. My name's Tron Enright-Randolph. I also serve as the elected county surveyor, so one of my roles in the county is overseeing our GIS, and we've been compiling a number of different parcel analysis dashboards,
- And one thing we found increasingly difficult is tracking of what's going on. And I wanted to ask, Eric, if there's any language in here that requires certain permitting or tracking of potentially renting out these rooms.
- Yeah. So in regards to the establishment of the SRO in the R1 R2 R3 and R4 they would have to be conditional use. So we certainly have that approval record of where that use is happening within those single family districts obviously within
- Every district you'll need a building permit for any remodeling to establish it. So we would have a record in that regard from a building permit. But if your question is, you know, who is using the facilities or renting the bedrooms, you know, that's not something that we can ask or information that we can specifically seek and tracks, you know, commercial rental space. I think this is kind of important to make sure that, you know, other
- Departments are kind of identifying kind of this type of use going on I think in the larger picture will give us a better way to kind of do some analysis on here and have Quantifiable data of like how many of these houses are now using this type of space I guess the building department would be a good first step but again that just creates more collaboration among more departments and it would be
- neat to start establishing this data internally and tracking it internally and then potentially shared with our assessor's office, our auditor's office, the hand department. There's a number of different use cases for this data to track. Also, and I'm not going to get, nevermind, I won't go on a tangent. There's a few other bits of data that would be helpful.
- Will kind of state my thoughts around the matter. I think the intention as well Let's try to keep it to questions at this. Oh, it's just questions Yeah, we'll have opportunity for comment after we go. Yeah, but just just no worries questions at this point Those were my questions. Thanks Commissioner Smith Good In the language here, I just want to understand under 12 single-room occupancy It doesn't anything changed here, but I'm confused item D calls out 150 foot buffer
- But then G calls out, everything has to line up with existing houses. How does this reconcile? Explain to me what the purpose of this language is. Why is there a 150 foot buffer all the way around one of these? Because there's no city lot in the city that can handle that.
- So explain how this works. Yeah, so the 150 foot buffer, the main purpose of that is just to kind of prevent an aggregation of these one use in a specific area. So it just helps ensure that they get spaced apart from another SRO use. So the next language in letter F where it talks about compatible with design, that just references the design of a new building being compatible with other houses on the block in terms of front porch depth, roof, things like that.
- Okay. So when you say buffer, it means from another use, allowable use like this. Correct. Yeah. It's not saying that there can't be another building within 150 feet. It's just saying there can't be another SRO in my head from set from property line. I'm like, well, what are we doing? Okay. That makes sense. Okay. All right. And then there was a resolution 20, 24 dash 25 and now we have a new one. Um, did, was this done last year and we kind of,
- Ignored it. And now they brought it back to us. We have been working on those legislation, but we did not get it to the Plain Commission and the timeline. So they've passed a few new resolutions extending that deadline. So we have the resolutions in here from 2024 and then it's identical in 2025. There was one in July 2025 and one of 1124. Right. So the one that was in July again was just extending that deadline. So the language and the actual intent of the resolution didn't change. It was just a deadline to get it to the council. Okay.
- Thank you So I'm not an expert on HUD or anything like that, but we've added some definitions like two adults Is that consistent with HUD's definition? And then the attached bathroom is that going to qualify as an SRO under HUD that may not matter Does the city get HUD funding?
- For these are they expecting to be able to tell builders you're going to be able to get HUD incentives if you build an SRO. Does it matter that these may not be consistent. I'm not even positive they are inconsistent with HUD but I've read a little bit about it and it looks like they may be.
- Yeah, so these are very much in line with a lot of the HUD regulations, which also a lot of the other communities based their regulations on as well. Obviously, communities are allowed to deviate, you know, and have their own unique standards. But, you know, an SRO that we're proposing would be very consistent with the HUD diagram. Okay. Commissioner Kinsey, go ahead. Planning the changes and
- With regard to the 150 foot buffer, the we've used this or deployed this mechanism for other conditional use in the past. Can you say if that's true and then why that that number and how that's used? Yep. So that's that language and and it's the same for the language in
- F as well as the language regarding no violations within the past three years are the same use specific restrictions that we have for duplexes. So we were just using that that same language. Yeah.
- I guess I want to ask has that worked pretty well for Well, I mean, you know, obviously there's a range of opinions there. Some folks would love to see that buffer eliminated completely in relation to duplexes oftentimes with some of these things we're looking at just kind of easing our feet into the water a little bit and Being a little bit more cautious on the onset, you know certainly if we see a lot of situations where we want these a lot more and there haven't been any problems we can certainly look at reducing that and
- You know, this is certainly something that could be amended in our annual series of amendments, but just changing the land use itself and the districts it's in is a lot more challenging because as a result of notifying or modifying the use table, we have to notify all the landowners in the property that have affected properties. And so, you know, we can amend the language later at a later time, but getting it into the use table has to kind of happen now. Well, we're modifying that table as a whole.
- I'm interested in it because I think there is some common understanding about this, so that's good to hear. The other question I had is about the owner occupancy requirement and how that went with legal in the discussion. Is there any concern about that requirement, adding that? I know that was a position that was favored by some folks who
- I'm from the public who comment it but I just wonder if there is anything that we should be concerned about. Yeah legally so you know this is demonstrated through the your filing of the homestead exemption because you can only claim one property for where you live. So that is something we have required previously. This was a component previously with the accessory dwelling unit language that we had. So we can certainly require you know with the use that the owner lived there. But that language was removed from the ADU so that's not in there now.
- I'm sorry. Not sure. It's still there. I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Still there. Okay. Thank you. All right. That's it for me for right now. You said hand will be the oversight group with with these for complaints and whatnot. Yeah. I believe that hand does review rooming houses or boarding houses as they're looked at now. Okay. And also as a conditional use. So hypothetically kind of like the plexus everything would go through the BZ a
- Approval on any property. Well, so they don't have to say duplexes were specifically written into the the udio that they have to go to the Board of Zoning Appeals You know, we have not proposed that specific language with this So it could go to the Board of Zoning Appeals or the hearing officer. Okay Thank you Commissioner seaboard Following up on a question I asked you earlier today was about the the parking
- For SROs as the the part maximum vehicle parking allowance table It says two spaces plus one space per guest room and I think the intention was for that to be per bedroom and just wanted to to confirm that with the group Yeah, so that that would be reference to each of the bedrooms within the house. Okay, so potentially we would if we wanted to make that a change that would be Yeah, so certainly they could clean that up to remove the word guest and say bedroom, okay
- Or modify that language to say anything else that you wanted as well So you could reduce the two spaces you could you know propose striking that maximum parking completely if you wanted But yeah, certainly an easy fix would just be to condition of approval to remove change guests to bed Great. Thank you Any other questions from commissioners All right seeing none we will now go to
- public comment on zero zero three dash 25 If you'd like to make comment if you're here in the chambers, just make your way up to the podium State your name for the record and please sign in there's a sheet there at the podium so we have a record of your name for the for the record if you are online and would like to make comment, please just click on the
- the reactions tab and raise your hand or send a chat message to the meeting host and we will recognize you when it is your turn to speak. You will have up to five minutes to make your comments. The timer will be on the screen to help guide you. But please take it away. I'm Kathy Curry. I live on Azalea Lane in Bloomington.
- And I understand that the original purpose to amend the UDO was to provide affordable housing that is no longer, there's no affordability requirement in here. So that sort of gets rid of that. Also, there was an intent to not make this student housing. And I appreciate the fact that you changed it as far as homeowner occupancy.
- Parents of students, IU students are very smart. There is nothing stopping a parent to buy a house in their child's name, in their 18, 19, 21 year old child's name. They could have a large house, have five bedrooms rented to 10, nine of their friends. They could charge $500 a kid,
- those kids would be having a blast at two adults per bedroom, five bedrooms, that ends up $5,000. That house would be paid for. Their mortgage would be paid for. So that totally goes to me against what the purpose and intent of the proposal was. So I would like you to consider that and also the parking. I think that that's addressed.
- Real sure in a lot of neighborhoods. There are speed bumps There are islands because of the already the difficult Driving that is happening in there. There are mailboxes In our neighborhood you had to have So many parking places for your home and you have those that two parking places to car garage then you have conceivably
- Eight ten kids with cars, let's say five kids with cars plus the owner I it's just I think there's a lot to be thought through a little more carefully before it's finalized. Thank you Thank you. I think we lost our timer at some point on that one. It got stuck at 445. All right Good evening
- My name is Anne Steigerwald. My husband and I watched the last meeting. We zoomed it and I really appreciate that everyone involved listened to the comments and made the change that the owner should live on the premises. I think that's a good rule. I listened to a post that the mayor gave. She said she wants.
- Bloomington to be more affordable for young professionals and working class families. This really would not address that at all. The proposal no doubt has excellent intentions. It's not intended for students and yet it's hard for me to imagine that it wouldn't be used by students. I think it's always important to consider
- while unlikely, how a proposal could be abused. If my math is correct, five bedrooms at two apiece, and that's a big issue, two people per bedroom, that equals potentially 10 people with leases of at least 30 days. So they could move out after 32, 33 days. So you could have 10 people
- and another 32 days, another 10 people. It seems to me if that house were next door to you, there's a potential for 100 people moving in and out of that house legally per year. I don't think I'd like to live next to that house. So please consider keeping the character of our neighborhoods,
- I'm concerned with that two adults per bedroom that really increases the density. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other public comment? Eric, do we have any online commenters waiting?
- Yes, we have at least two folks that I can see. All right, we'll do one more here in the chambers, then we'll go to online comment. I can put my reading glasses on so I can see a little better. My name is, I'll take this one. My name is Leo Pilachowski. I reside in Bloomington for the last 25 years. I don't usually come in front of Planning Commission, in fact this is the first time Planning Commission is 25 years in Bloomington, but I think this UDO change is,
- very important, it has a great deal of future ramifications and effects on urban areas. Quite frankly, we have boarding houses already in Bloomington, not boarding houses, but borders in single-family houses, and in fact, in the two houses that I've lived in in Bloomington, across the street from me at Neighborhood Streets, there's a house with a border. It works out really well, it's great. In fact, given that
- And overall, there's a lot of it. I've seen it when I was in a childhood, growing up, and it's not uncommon that we do it already, okay, in a small, one or two at a time, in a few houses in a neighborhood. However, when you're gonna write an ordinance like this, you're going to now recognize that officially and put it in your codes. You have to maintain a balance between the need for housing and the need to protect
- not only your neighborhood character, and I'm not doing this as a NIMBY, but how your infrastructure works and lots of other things like that. I wrote a comment to this commission, and I hope it's in your packet. It was a little late because I couldn't read the packet. But as Eric Grulich said, this is not only in this community. It's lots of other ones. California is an example. And they're now having a problem with doing just this kind of,
- adding SROs and lot splits. They saw it already, but they're really seeing it now when they're rebuilding after the Palisades fires. They're getting a lot of units now, new units, and older stuff that's rebuilt, as I pointed out in my comments, that become de facto student, I mean, studio apartment complexes. Here, we're looking at
- in single families of five units in R4, we're looking at 20 of those and whatnot. Now you say why do we do that? Because I'll explain a little bit of that later as I did before. So we have de facto ones.
- And as I said, California's looking at this, and actually from the governor's office down to the local people in Los Angeles and other things, they're actually thinking about changing their laws and their rules and regulations on this. So we have to be really careful when we implement this. Now, this is not just single family. It's also duplexes, triflexes, and quadriplexes. So you're not getting just five rooms for each. You could be getting 20 rooms.
- in the quadriplexes. Owner occupancy is a good thing, maybe a good thing to require, but it's very hard to really implement that because you have a lot of residential properties that have multiple owners. A grandmother and other owner, and you have to be careful how you implement that. One of the speakers just said, maybe my child owns 2% of it, is that an owner occupancy.
- The real effect of this regulation is not the number of rooms, but the number of adults. And so rather than regulating the number of rooms, you might want to think about regulating the number of unrelated adults. But we already do this in Bloomington, having three unrelated adults, alchemy allowances at times without, with some, you can apply for more, but it's literally three.
- And you might want to think about having that limitation on SROs in a unit, like one single family three for 12 for a four plex. That's probably a better way to regulate it. It also regulates the parking need. It regulates the infrastructure need. Sewage, how much usage you make of your infrastructure. That may be a better way to regulate. Now, I pointed out to Eric Gruich before the July hearing
- the problem with bathrooms not being independent, being independent of things. That problem also exists with many refrigerators, with microwaves and whatnot, to make these units look like studio units. So you can't regulate that, that's why we have to carefully consider this. So I think the commission here may wanna take a little more time, or the city too, to really look at the ramifications of what's happening. Thank you for your time.
- folks online if we want to jump to them. Yep. Let's go ahead and take some online comments. So Chris Sturbaum is the first one. Chris, you should be able to unmute. OK. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. OK. I'm speaking. Although I'm a board member of Kona Council of Neighborhood Associations, I'm speaking as an individual.
- Good intentions do not always make good laws. There are questions and negatives for every positive in this UDO amendment allowing SROs in single-family neighborhoods. First, let's have two people per room because unrelated couples can then rent a single room. Sounds good in this town. But then you can pack five-bedroom SROs with 10 people
- or student rentals, there's no control of income. And the game in this town is to rent to students and make a good amount of money. Populate the neighborhood as much as you possibly can to make the maximum income. And interestingly, in a HUD document, they literally define SROs as a residential property that include multiple single room dwelling units. Each unit is for occupancy by a single
- individual. That is a HUD quote. So now to ownership. Sounds like a great requirement. Sounds safe. But then without specifying 100% ownership, you could have tenants be 1% owners in an LLC based on their lease and you've worked around the requirement. Ownership could also be a nonprofit. So the idea that a homeowner would be able to rent a couple of rooms to people affordably to help their income
- or have a caretaker stay isn't always what you're going to get. So the change from three rooms to five in all zones, possibly the worst idea. Those five bedrooms in multifamily zones, fine. But one of those on any block where you're parking on the street, it just overwhelms the parking. It just takes over the neighborhood. With three,
- You might have a person who really lives in that house but rents out some bedrooms, but with five, you're obviously targeting investors as no single homeowner is gonna rent out five rooms in their own house. That's obvious. Finally, removing the prohibition of attached bathrooms. Less restrictive, better accommodations, right? But then it'll simply allow existing multiplexes to convert
- to single room occupancies and increase their occupancy and income without a single modification. Just fill each bedroom with two people. Nice ideas, but with the limitations on controlling owner occupancy or rent or even the number of related individuals in one room, this SRO ordinance opens the door for the good actors
- but leaves it open for the bad actors. These dense SROs should be fine in multifamily zones, but they simply have the potential of over-occupancy and harm to the single zones of R1 through R4. If the point is that you no longer believe in single-family zoning, then you should say so. If the point is that you no longer believe in single-family zones, say so, but otherwise please
- recognize the harm that a well-meaning but carelessly conceived UDO amendment will have on Bloomington neighborhoods. The reason this is in front of the plan commission before going to a council is so you will apply your expertise to review this proposal before it becomes law. Please don't send this back to council with these built-in flaws. For all the intended good in this amendment, it will do more harm
- to neighborhoods than good. This amendment is not ready for prime time. Please delay it. Please revise it. Possibly take them out of single-family neighborhoods. There are plenty of multifamily neighborhoods where this will really help. But it's interesting that in looking over other communities, very few, if any, had what we're proposing, which is five bedrooms with two occupants each.
- The number of SROs that qualify for that and look like what we're proposing was next to zero. So think carefully before you send this back to a council that's just gonna probably rubber stamp it. Thank you. Thank you. Next online we have Eric. You should be able to unmute.
- Good evening, can you hear me? Yes. My name is Eric Ost and I appreciate this opportunity to offer public comment. I applaud the sincere care and concern that many are investing in the facilitation of housing for all. Through their persistent efforts, many residents of our community are safe.
- In my work, I consider both structural and functional components in their multifactored evolving and often complex into relationship. Review and analysis of three decades of housing population and economic data informs my comments this evening. While our community has seen growing numbers of
- our community facing increasing levels of uncertainty in regard to housing, the current SRO proposal does not appear to hold much promise to significantly alter this uncertainty. The existing housing market will focus on the highest and best use of a property and maximizing return on investment.
- At a time when our community says we want to prioritize and incentivize homeownership, the current formulation of SROs would directly motivate the development of market rate student housing. Since the introduction of the July version of the SRO petition, the number of adults per bedroom is increased by 100% from one adult to two adults, and the number of bedrooms in all residential zones has been increased from three bedrooms to five bedrooms. Existing covenants
- and the market will have the combined effect of focusing the development and construction of SROs in neighborhoods that are already dense and already predominantly market rate rental housing. I'm sorry, I have to skip forward here. It's been reiterated that SROs and residential zones are a conditional use, yet
- The packet clearly states that the legal department has advised that affordability cannot be a requirement with a conditional use. Let's consider the obvious economics of this proposal. An existing duplex with six bedrooms, three bedrooms in each unit, and a total six occupants can be converted at little to no cost to an SRO. Under the current proposal, there could be 12 occupants. If an existing five bedroom house is rented to three adults,
- Its declaration as an SRO permitted use would appear to allow immediate increase to 10 occupants with little to no cost and realizing a tripling, more than a tripling of revenue. Finally, in regard to owner occupancy requirement,
- Hand issued a June 25th, 2025 interpretation of Title 16, which I'll read in part. If a residential rental unit is owned by a limited liability corporation or similar entity and is occupied as a primary residence by the incorporator, the governing person or the registered agent or their equivalent, then the property shall be treated as occupied by the owner. This interpretation,
- It appears to indicate that an LLC, a manager managed LLC with a carefully written operating agreement can completely sidestep not only the owner occupancy requirement, but perhaps even the need to register as a rental. Now this existed for many years, but now that this has come out and there's been a declaration by the hand, by the director of hand,
- I think this is something we're going to have to attend to. And if I'm wrong, I'd like to be proven wrong. But it seems that this is an easy thing to do. So I have other things that I could say, but I'll just end here. Please think about what our community is actually trying to do and what the current petition will likely do. Thank you. Thank you.
- We have two more folks online. I don't know if we want to see if there's anybody else here in council chambers or just- Let's go ahead and finish the online comments and then we'll come back to the chambers. Wendy Bernstein, you should be able to unmute. Hi, I'm Wendy Bernstein. I live in Elm Heights and I very much appreciate my neighborhood, an old core neighborhood with lots of single housing and a considerable number of
- ADUs and some old duplexes in the neighborhood. And I basically want to thank my fellow community members for their strong, well-founded statements. I found this proposal very confusing as to how it would actually achieve anything positive. And it's such a small,
- changed, but with very big ramifications. So I do not have anything to add to the wise remarks of everyone who preceded me from the community. I want the core neighborhoods to survive. I do not want them degraded. I don't want too many people in a house with too many cars and
- It's very simple to see how so-called good intentions for affordability could have very negative results. And I just find the extreme amount of excess development in our community and the high profits being made by outside developments on empty units to make this whole proposition and almost most of our city planning
- terribly ironic and counterproductive. So forgive me, but I'm extremely frustrated in watching how this town has suffered at the hands of people who seem to care more about profits than quality of life. Thank you.
- Next, Anna Killian, you should be able to unmute. Hi, I'm Anna Killian Hansen. I am the Director of Hand. I wanted to just chime in briefly and address Mr. Enright's comment in regards to hand.
- So short-term rentals will be inspected, or not short-term, SROs will be inspected and permitted by hand provided that they are not short-term rentals. So just know that that will be on our radar. And then I did also wanna address one of the previous comments. That is not what that code interpretation says. It just means that if you own an LLC in your child or
- yourself are living within that unit, then we will consider it owner occupied. We won't recall. I think we lost you there. Are you still there? That is it. That's all for me. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.
- Isabel Piedmont Smith, you should be able to unmute. Okay, thank you. Yes, I'm Isabel Piedmont Smith, limited city council district one. I'm the one who sponsored the resolution to ask you all to look into single room occupancy. And as has been mentioned, the purpose was to just open up one more avenue for more affordable housing units.
- So I wanted to just respond to some of the comments from other people who have made comments this evening. And I can only speak for myself, of course. This was unanimously passed along. The resolution was unanimously adopted, so I don't know what other members of council would say, but I understand the concerns about
- two people per bedroom. The intention there was to allow people who are, you know, in couples to stay together if they are maybe coming out of homelessness or struggling to stay housed. Often they want to stay as a couple and support each other. And so that was the intention for allowing two per bedroom. We can
- it could be changed to one per bedroom in the R1 through R4 districts that I wouldn't be opposed to that. As far as the ownership and having parents of students buy a house and then the student lives there, which of course goes against the purpose of affordable housing, I would be also willing to consider
- in the R1 through R4 districts, it's only allowed if a nonprofit is running the SRO. To become a nonprofit, you have to go through many different steps, which I doubt anybody would pursue if they're not, if they're just trying to make a quick buck. If we limit to one per bedroom in R1 through R4,
- and if we allow only non-profits in R1 through R4, I would recommend just making it a permitted use because we've really narrowed it down. We've allowed one adult per bedroom, which is typically what has been allowed. I mean, there's a possibility that it would be a five bedroom house. We could tinker with that, but I know that
- Things going, conditional use are problematic. The BZA, I've heard complaints from the BZA that all this conditional use is really burdensome on them. And frankly, if we think it's an appropriate use, then we should just put conditions on it that apply across the board and not go case by case. I'm not a fan of conditional use.
- So if we put back all these safeguards, one per bedroom, maybe reduce them from five to three in some of the residential districts, allow only nonprofit ownership. I mean, these are pretty strong safeguards. And then I would say, if the Planning Commission decides to do that, let's just make it permitted use. So that's all I've got, thank you.
- Okay, we will come back now to the chambers. Are there anyone else in the chambers that would like to make public comment? We used to have one more person online Pam Weaver All right Pam you should be able to unmute Okay, I'm unmuted. It's all good We can hear you. Go ahead. Okay fantastic
- Um, I actually, I actually am attending the meeting, uh, primarily because of the, the next subject about the urban farming, but, um, as a, as a long time, um, resident of the Bryant Park neighborhood and also having rentals in Bryant Park myself, I, I just been listening to these comments and felt like I needed to make comments because I'm not,
- completely in alignment with most of the comments that have been made in a couple of ways. The first thing I think is that when the UDO was revised last time I was heavily involved in that and at that time I did spend some time actually looking at who owned
- rentals in at least in Bryant Park and actually very few outside companies owned most were like me who lived in the neighborhood or live somewhere else in Bloomington and own like maybe one or two places I mean I literally looked at the records for the the lot so I think there it's kind of overblown that everybody comes from the outside number one. Number two I think student student ownership students like if if in this SRO as
- y'all have been saying, I guess it's OK for parents to own the place and the student comes in as an owner and then can rent bedrooms. And I think there's an assumption here that the student who is the owner is somehow wealthy. And I can tell you that when I and my husband were saving money for our two children to go to school, we actually
- considered lots of options and one of the things we did when each one was born was we scrimped and saved to buy a rental near where we were at the time which was Indianapolis and knowing that we would be able to do a 1031 exchange to help offset costs for our children to go to college and that was part of our college savings plan and yes we we thought yeah this is great we'll be able to save some money on
- living expenses if our kid can essentially live there for free while they're in school. So there was not like in our case, we're not super wealthy or whatever at all. And it turned out that we didn't do that, but it was not the case that it was because we wanted to maximize our profit, et cetera, et cetera. We just wanted to make it more affordable for our own kids to go to school. And the third thing I want to say is that
- We talk a lot about affordable housing, but we know, and I'm like 100%, 190% for affordable housing. I've often rented to folks who are, gosh, I'm losing my mind here. I can't think of it, who have assistance in my house in Bryan Park. And so I could maximize it and make more money, but
- cognizant of people who need affordable housing. And the thing is there isn't enough housing. So I don't disagree necessarily that if we open this up to SRO and it could be that there is a bump where we end up with a lot of people in the neighborhood and we end up with some people who are able to buy a home and convert it to an SRO, end up with a lot of money.
- I mean, just the laws of supply and demand say that right now everything is at a premium in part, and the reason why people are willing to invest is because there isn't enough housing. Full stop for students, whether they're wealthy or not, for people who are homeless, for young families, there just isn't enough housing. And in an area like the core neighborhoods where people can
- walk to parks where they can walk to town, where they can walk to schools, where they can walk to the pool, whatever it is. I mean, it just makes sense to me to maximize how many people can live in that area. And if you want to live in an area that is 100% for sure just single family, then maybe go to a place that has covenants and go to a place that like
- You know, anyway, I think over time, and maybe it's not enough time, maybe it would take longer than most people would like, but over time, if there is more housing, then naturally the housing will come down in price. So I just wanted to make some, you know, counter comments. Thank you. Thank you very much.
- We have one more person online Carrie you should be able to unmute Hi, I'm Carrie Winderman and I live in Winslow farms and and I was on last time when this issue was addressed and my comments are what I liked hearing this evening is the
- one adult per bedroom. I think that that's just really wise. I appreciate that the council listened and had owner occupied as a stipulation. Two speakers back, I wasn't really clear on, so only nonprofits are going to be able to do the conditional use or get the permit whichever way it's gonna go.
- I mean, that was a suggestion, but I'm assuming it would be nonprofits and people who actually own a home and live in it and want to rent a room out. So anyway, I was a little confused by someone's comment and I look forward to hearing more about this at a next meeting. I hope that people's suggestions, I pretty much agreed with what everyone was saying as far as
- trying to control it and looking at what the pitfalls of it could be. Those were some things I hadn't thought of, so I really appreciate people's comments. And I hope that you work on this proposal even more and tighten it up even more. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. All right, last call for public comment on ZO03-25.
- See anybody else online if there is anybody else online, please use the the raise hand Function or send a message via chat All right, I think we are then back to the Commission for any additional questions comments or Motions, we'll start down here again. Go ahead Commissioner and Randolph Yes, and this is a process question. I think it's
- Beneficial for the public certification The process that we're going under right now is we review this we can amend it We can kind of vote yes or no And then it goes to the common council and then they have a process they can kind of suggest amendments or support what we have
- Would you kind of expand on that for the public of kind of the process that these amendments go through?
- So the Planning Commission they can certainly modify the language that is being proposed today so if there are certain aspects of the use specific standards or the List of districts where this use is proposed to be allowed within is something of the kind of the Planning Commission wants to change, you know, you simply make a motion to Propose whatever you would like. So you want to make it a permitted use in all the districts You want to strike the owner occupancy you wanted whatever you want to do you make that motion if that gets enough votes
- then that goes on to the common council. They can, as you mentioned, they can adopt what you sent to them. They can put on reasonable conditions or they can modify it. If they modify it, it has to come back to you for ratification. Which means that we have a period of time to accept those changes or kind of go through that whole process of offering other amendments, but ultimately,
- The final adoption of this is going to be from the Common Council. Correct. Yeah. Okay. I just I think it's important for the public to understand the process here. I just had one other
- So I think generally when it says owner occupant people think that's their permanent residence It sounds like there might be some wiggle room from legal interpretations and other comments made I would leave that to kind of those experts but There's also the homestead deduction which really makes it a requirement that you are the person that lives there if
- if you wanted to go that approach and require them to, you know, file for a homestead deduction, that might really get the intention of the home occupant discussion. And that's just kind of my observation of kind of that term being used, is it's really like someone living there and renting out their rooms. So that's just a comment for consideration for the planned commissioner of the common council. And finally, what I was alluding to,
- when we're in the questions period. I think this is very well intended, but as spoken, and I'm not gonna repeat everything, it just needs to be executed correctly, and I hope we find that balance. Thank you. Commissioner Smith.
- Proposed ordinance you have a proposed parking requirement of two plus one per occupied room or one per bedroom. Yes So on a five-bedroom house, that's a 12 parking lot requirement, correct? That would be seven So two for the five and seven. Okay, so seven. Okay seven for the house, right?
- There was a comment earlier about how, at no cost, you could just start converting houses. Currently, duplexes have .5 spaces per bedroom. And if any of you ever have petitioned a project in Bloomington, you'll know converting a duplex to a SRO will be darn near impossible because of the CBU requirements, because of drainage, because of all the ordinance that's gonna get thrown at you to modify a parking lot and add additional parking. So I wanna alleviate some of your fears that all your neighborhoods are gonna turn into that.
- Currently in my neighborhood, I have a .2 acre lot, which is about the average size in Bloomington. 40% pervious surface requirement, so 3,000 feet is taken right off the top. Then you add 3,000 square feet for parking and driveways, setbacks, buffers, you hardly have any room left for a house, especially a five bedroom house with living space. So I just want to alleviate some concerns about that. This is written,
- Intentionally and very purposefully but we have a lot of codes in town that you just can't do and I feel like that's the road We're going down. I also understand right now if you live in a house Anywhere in Bloomington that you can have two roommates with no hand permit. Is that still the case? I Can't speak for hand, but if you're using it as a rental then it has to be If your owner occupied you're allowed to have roommates in this town even the neighborhoods that restrict rentals
- You cannot restrict an owner-occupant from having two roommates. That is my understanding of the code. Sure, so from a zoning perspective, if there are three unrelated ulcers, that's the cap from the UDO perspective. If you need a hand permit, that's something that I'd encourage someone to find out from hands specifically. Not if it's owner-occupied. And we can have Anna Killian come back on and confirm that. Yeah, no, that's not correct. They have to be related. So I know of certain situations where an owner-occupant
- His son is living with them. His son has a girlfriend. He has a girlfriend We haven't intervened in those types of situations, but if it's a rental it needs a rental permit Interesting Okay, well that helps a little bit I was gonna say right now seems like in our neighborhoods we could already do this but I would also comment that
- Five-bedroom two per bedroom. I would have to agree a little bit with some of these comments that r1 r2 r3 It's probably not appropriate. I just looked at the zoning map. I Think we should have different rules for r1 r2 r3 Than the rest of the zoning districts including r4 like r4 and everything else can be lumped together simply because of what r1 r2 r3 are in our zoning map right now and
- I think the one person per bedroom should apply to those three. I think that's a better approach. I'm also and I could say this at the end but when we have these discussions about housing we have a housing problem in Bloomington whether you believe it or not we do. We're way overpriced. I mean way way way overpriced. It's gotten to the point of insanity and it's all.
- It's all a result of vilifying students. In the 80s, around 86, when the IU outlawed alcohol on campus, there was kind of an influx of students on campus. They were kind of controlled around campus, and they got into Elm Heights, they got into all the neighborhoods around it. We responded with hand and with occupancy controls, and five unrelated, and then three unrelated, and then we used historic preservation as another tool to stop tear downs and rebuilds. There's some good of that, there's been some bad of that.
- But that's where this started. But we're not there today. The reason we have these huge complexes near the stadium is we're pulling the students back on campus. And we've done a really good job of it. And also, our housing stock's gotten so darn expensive, you can't buy a three-on-related permit and buy that house and afford to rent it because the rentals do not justify the value by any stretch of the imagination.
- I've talked to my friends who are landlords and said, you need to look at your housing stock because you are under-invested. You need to sell these single-family homes back to families and reinvest that money somewhere else. Maybe on campus. I don't know. Somewhere to where real rentals are. So every time we have these meetings about housing, we vilify the students. We raise all these red flags, and there's certain people that are very good at it, and it's mainly the people that are in my age group. We have to stop doing it because we're all here because of Indiana University, and these students have to have a place to live. And not all of them are bad.
- I also have a question about Well, I'm gonna get down on the next petition. I'm not gonna bring that up here So I think there's some good in this. I think it needs to be controlled by zoning I don't think it should be in the r102 or three zone as written. I think it should be limited to one and maybe three bedrooms People need the ability to do that Everybody should have the ability to do that if they live there and I like Tron's idea of is have a homestead exemption Then we'll argue that you live there Thank you Thank you
- Topic so good great comments from both sides. I think I Think the intent is good SROs and I agree with I mean that we want affordable housing, right? The way you increase that is you increase supply, right? That gives you more affordable housing higher supply the price goes down. That's the basic economics of it and
- The city plan said the city wants to add density is what that means. So how does the city want to add density? This the comprehensive plan talks about this and and I liked it. I read the comp. I'd never seen it before but since the last meeting I looked at the comprehensive plan and it says things like it wants to we avoid high density forms in single family neighborhoods.
- There's lots of places where it says sustain neighborhood character Existing core neighborhoods should not be targets for increased density so Going with with what you said maybe not for r1 through r3 or r1 through r4 Personally, I would think a good amendment to this would be to eliminate the
- in R1 through R4 entirely, maybe allowed in R4 but eliminated in the residential uses. Most of these concerns go away. Most of the concerns of residents who are speaking go away completely if we put these things in multifamily. I think there was also a comment about making this a permitted use instead of a conditional use. So I think that's a great idea. If you want more of these, make it easier to build them. Grease the skids in other ways as well. I don't know enough about the code or what the permitting process is or what people have to go through
- to build these things, make it easier. That's what other cities have done that were successful and that produced lots of SROs. There was a San Diego study. They removed all sorts of barriers and just made the process easier and it was successful. Let's see. There's no way to make this not student housing, right? I think in vilifying students, I mean, some people do.
- want to live next to students. Some people don't. The fact is they're going to be able to live wherever they want to live. And if this is attractive to them, they're going to move in there. So if that is is an issue, then again, keeping it out of the residential solves that problem entirely. The city's housing stock and I don't know the full history on this, but lots of houses, single family houses were bought
- and converted into rentals right broken up into multiple units and rented to students and the city as part of the comprehensive plan the city's trying to sort of gather those back in and make them single family residents again putting this in the residential
- zones is going to go in the exact opposite direction of what the comprehensive plan wants to do. It's going to make it even easier and more incentive for people, whether it's an owner occupant or an investor, to buy a house, break it up into multiple units, and rent to people, whether it's students or anybody else. But the economic incentive is going to be there. It's going to move in the opposite direction of what the comprehensive plan wants to do, which is reclaim the single-family home stock from rental.
- Let's see. I think that's good. That's enough for me. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kinsey. Yeah. I'm hoping maybe we can clear up a few of the comments and questions that were raised by some of the commenters. The one I think is interesting is related to Isabel Piedmont Smith's commissioner. Our council members Piedmont Smith's.
- Suggestion to only allow if nonprofit and I wonder if that if you could comment Eric about that and how that would work if if that would Yeah, if that seems like a reasonable solution
- Sure, yeah, and that's that's absolutely something that you know that one of the conditions that one of these specific conditions We're proposing is that the owner of the property either live there or be a nonprofit So if the Plain Commission wanted to adopt that language You would just strike out the portion of that sentence that says the owner has to live there And it would just say that the nonprofit would have to own the property So a lot of the the things and I'll just kind of take this opportunity to say a lot of the language that we in here we were adopting from
- from specifically the council resolution.
- They wanted to have two occupants per unit. They wanted to remove the owner occupancy requirement altogether. And we fully acknowledge that this was going to be a very challenging piece of legislation to bring forward with all of the challenges that I was mentioning earlier of how to not make this just dominated by student rentals. This use already is allowed right now. It's a residential rooming house. It's in the zoning code right now. You can do it in every zoning district except the single family. In the RM and RH, you just have an owner occupancy requirement.
- requirement. So, you know, the Plaint Commission certainly has a wide range of options. You could certainly choose to say that the all of the amendment, you know, none of it should be adopted and recommend denial of the whole thing. You can modify it with conditions to reflect Councilmember Isabel Piedmont Smith's recommendation to just have one person per bedroom, have it be a nonprofit, make it be a permitted use. However, if you restrict it to three bedrooms with all those requirements,
- All you're doing is what we've got right now. It's just a normal single family house that you can rent to three people. So in order to make this something different in order to expand the housing options you've got to make it something more than three bedrooms per unit if you're limiting it to one person per bedroom. So that's just kind of something to keep in mind is you know we're trying to introduce something that is different that helps give some variety give some options for folks within the single family neighborhoods. And so that's that's the crux of what we're looking at.
- Yeah, I guess the I've been trying to compare the proposed allowable use table to the what is current. And I mean, substantially what we've talked ourselves around here is reverting or just continuing what is already in the allowed the current allowed use table, except that we're changing the name from residential rooming house to single room occupancy. Yes. And introducing this as a
- allowance within single family districts Yeah, well I guess I was thinking about the proposed or some of the solutions here would essentially take us right back to where we are except for in the name Change. Okay. All right. I can reconcile this the the other question is About the considerations from shifting it to three to five when we looked at this last month it was
- you know, it had some variation. Um, and now it's all shifted to five. Can you say a little bit more about what went into that? Was that just to maximize and it seemed more possible to get more space? Yeah. So like I said, you know, we were trying to find ways to make this add additional housing, so adding bedrooms. So if we added the restriction that the owner has to live there or that it be a nonprofit that seemed to balance out, um,
- You know that would provide more on site management decrease the chance of student rental make it a different housing option than what would currently be allowed. You know the three bedrooms like I said the three bedrooms that would be in there for the R1 or R2 or R3. You can do that now. So what what is this. What is this accomplishing if we have that restriction on there. OK. Yeah I'm just trying to keep track of all the tradeoffs here between last month and this month. OK. All right. One more and it looks like we got clarity on the
- LLC the comment about sidestepping as an LLC, but it looks it sounded to me like that's not At least from Anna Killian comments that that is not Something that can be done that there are restrictions in place Yeah, that was something that was more specific to hand and as the director Killian Hansen said, you know that that was not exactly correctly stated and
- So, you know, like I mentioned, you know, we we're just bringing forward legislation that was trying to be in keeping with the resolution. You know, ultimately, as you guys mentioned, this does go to the city council for their ultimate review. Okay. Thank you. So just speaking in relation to the owner occupant requirement.
- And, Tron, for your information, a homestead exemption as a way of policing this, it really doesn't work. Because you can, I mean, I have clients from out of town that come and buy a house in their name, in their name of their adult child. And then the adult child has the, that has never owned any property anywhere, they can have the homestead exemption. So there are ways around the ownership.
- There are several ways around this and the LLC same thing. It could be, you know, a manager LLC and you can have several owners in there and it could be an owner that potentially is a younger person that lives there and benefit for some sort for the family. So just clarifying that.
- I think Patrick brought up something really interesting, which is that this goes against what the comprehensive plan is talking about single family neighborhoods. And we should, and I know that the UDO and the comprehensive plan work hand in hand and sometimes there's some issues there, but we should pay attention to that. I understand the problem of affordability.
- And the lack of housing and that has been of course in my line of work has been problematic and but I don't think that I understand also the city trying to give more choices for people to do this. But I do see a problem of creating more problems than choices.
- In the ideal world, we would be thinking of maybe a new sewer plant so we can expand the city different things like that and not just So we can have more building more new construction so we can alleviate the Basically more supply anyway, I digress here but
- I do see problems with the parking becoming probably impossible for anybody to do this if they have to comply with the city codes. And I I tend to agree with Isabel but then we're going back to what it was and making a permitted use for nonprofits that
- That might be good but I am in the Board of Zoning Appeals so I don't think it's problematic for this to go back as a conditional use as well because when you go in front of the Board of Zoning Appeals they are going to see exactly the intent of how they how you're you're using this property and that will determine if it should be approved or not. So it is another mechanism to stop
- people from doing things that they say I mean to see the intent of what they're going to do. But anyway a lot of food for thought here. I think two unrelated adults per bedroom in the situation is is excessive that owner occupant requirement. I don't think it would alleviate anything because it can be worked around.
- The three to five bedroom in our one two and three Goes against a comprehensive brand plan with preserving the neighborhood. So anyway, those are my thoughts So
- Just curious on the parking so that we can get some clarification since that's been brought up a couple times. Is it a requirement or it is a maximum allowed? Yeah, so the you do does not have a minimum for this use. It's just a maximum So the numbers that we were talking about would be the maximum. Okay, and like in some of our neighborhood streets where you take your
- Haven't done this in a while. So forgive me if I'm if this is not to be up-to-date you would Take your rent agreement to come purchase a street permit on some certain neighborhood streets Is there a cap as to how many is that related to the rental? Yeah, I don't I don't generally you're correct I don't know the maximum cap of how many street permits you would get I
- But maybe Anna knows that, too. If you've got a rental permit for three occupants, maybe there's only three parking permits that can be issued. I don't know. May not be worth discussing. But just wanted to clarify that. And then I was curious. Oh, we're going to answer that.
- If you're in a single-family house, you can get a permit in a district that's restricted I believe it's one permit per house and one guest permit Yeah, and so I mean they have rules so I don't know that we know that SROs would even be able to get permits Which is why you know a lot of like Chris was mentioning like Commissioner Smith was mentioning might be restricted by parcel size if they can't park on the street
- Okay, great. Um, and then yeah, I guess I would just I think that there's been a lot of really good conversation around this I understand what we want to accomplish in the city and I and I agree with a lot of the things that Commissioner Smith Patrick and the others have shared as well as City Councilmember Isabelle Piedmont Smith and
- I guess I just I'm kind of almost where I think Commissioner Kinsey is where we may have sort of Talked around this to where now it's we're changing the name But we're not actually making any other changes to the uses. So just think that we maybe need to Have a little bit more conversation about that. Thank you. I
- For the sake of time. I've just bullet bullet pointed some points. I want to make Commissioner Burrell and I both sit on the BZA. So right now we're two-fifths of that represented here I very much agree with what she's saying This is similar to the plexus issue that Everybody was up in arms about and there was all the signs around all the neighborhoods saying don't overrun our neighborhoods I can tell you I can count on both hands a number of conditional use Uses we've had for the plexus and in four years I've been on the BZA and it's about ten
- So I would welcome that because I think that's the intended purpose of the BZA is for exceptions to the rule. I also think hand oversight, I appreciate Anna Killian Hansen's input. I say one bedroom as Commissioner Smith said are one to three. I would keep it five bedrooms because again, I think if it's conditional use, there's oversight. As Ms. Burrell said, we're going to be able to scrutinize that in the BZA to make sure it is the right intended use and not get exploited. That's it.
- Will be really brief as well. I guess just yep the parking that we've talked about our maximum So somebody wouldn't have to add parking but that would be a consideration I imagine of the BCA is they is they reviewed these also in the neighborhood? residential permit zones, I think it's each tenant is entitled a permit and Not each home. So if there are ten hypothetical tenants of a single home, they would all be eligible per the current code and
- I guess one question is I've heard some comments about concern with this being inconsistent with the comprehensive plan Comprehensive plan has a lot of goals and I guess just if staff could respond to that concern or of The proposal being inconsistent with the comp plan. Yes to the comprehensive plan has has a lot of goals and a lot of different
- districts that are outlined within their, you know, talks about mixture of housing types it talks about appropriate density and locations. You know, it talks about diversifying housing, looking for infield development, you know,
- discouraging urban sprawl. And so, you know, this resolution from the council certainly matches a lot of the goals of the comprehensive plan in terms of diversifying housing options for folks looking for ways to achieve affordable housing, even though there's not an affordable housing component with this specifically, you know, the hope for and with a lot of SROs because you're only renting a room and you've got more people in there, hopefully that makes the rent more affordable. It's not trying to meet
- an affordability standard, but it makes it more affordable as a whole. So the comprehensive plan and these uses certainly I think match the comprehensive plan in general. You know, it's not encouraging buildings that are taller or that would be out of character with a specific neighborhood. You know, it's not changing the standards that apply to this in terms of your development standards, giving it reduced setbacks or allowing it to be taller. You know, it's just giving additional housing options within
- the community. So I certainly think there's a lot of aspects of the comprehensive plan that this does support. You know as I mentioned and I'll just kind of repeat this again you know the Common Council passed a resolution directing the Planning Commission to bring forward this legislation you know keeping in mind the seven things that are in that resolution you know we can certainly try to
- we have to make sure that we are keeping with the intent of that resolution. So while I mentioned that there were a lot of things that were on the table, we can certainly bring forward what they want. And ultimately, as I said, this will go to the common council for them to make the choice of whether or not this is something that they feel, you know, now that all the issues have been vetted, you know, and all the pros and cons have been laid out, is this something that they want to pass? And we just try to make that as best as we can, but we do have to still keep in mind it has to be somewhat mostly consistent
- with their with their resolution Thank you, I think we are at the point where And I'm so sorry. There was one individual that joined late on zoom and wanted to know if they would still be able to speak We are past the time for public comment. That's why I'd like to send your message in the in the chat We can make sure that it gets included in the record We
- Go ahead. I Missed the word maximum the parking the speaker online was right. There's no parking requirement all for these So I'll go back to my comment r1 r2 r3 make parking required Because that'll shut down most of them anyway, and you'll have to really want it to get it So alright So I think we're at the point where we need to get a motion of some sort on the table here as a reminder the the staff recommendation is that we forward this to the common council with a positive recommendation and
- Other options, of course are to forward it with a negative recommendation or with no recommendation at all We also have the opportunity to to offer amendments here But I'll just remind everyone that we've been here in very very similar circumstances before The Common Council is is far from a rubber stamp when we when we dealt with the plexus issue we made
- Some some amendments here very similar to what some of that have been talked about tonight. We made plexus a permitted use and Common Council promptly turned around and changed that back to being conditional use so Certainly any any member of this Commission is welcome to offer amendments, but I would I would suggest
- Common Council is going to have the final say on this and probably is going to Shape this into the form that they want to pass Regardless of what we do here tonight And so I think our best Role here is simply to give them guidance on on what we think is Is best and so with that I'll entertain any motion that anyone would like to make Good
- brief comment before the motion the residential rooming houses that we currently have are limited to four. And if this passes even without our one through our four there are unlimited number of units that they can build as SRO. So it is a big expansion even without our one through our four the way I read it. So I would move and I don't know if I'm doing the proper language apologies but I would move that we remove the R1 through our four uses and then pass.
- All right, so there's a motion to strike SRO as a conditional use in R1 through R4, correct? Just quick question for staff, is that clear? Is that?
- So it sounds like the motion would be to approve it with all of the other conditions and use specific standards but with the modification that it not be a conditional use or Permitted use in the r1 r2 r3 and r4. I see are you're trying to make that? two actions in one motion there Remove from our one through four and then forward with a positive recommendation. Is that correct? I
- And with any other amendments needed like the owner occupancy requirement becomes moot at that point. So there may be a few other amendments for consistency. But I think that removes most of the issues for me. I see. OK. Just a moment. I want to wait for staff to respond back to what we got now. That would be the effect of it.
- Want to make amendments should we just instead of the motion being to? Make this amendment and forward it should we vote on each specific? Yeah, but I guess let me let me just get a quick a quick straw poll here Are there other commissioners who intend to make additional to offer additional amendments? Because if so, I think you're it would make sense to take them one by one if there are commissioners who want to make additional amendments if this amendment were to pass a
- That would be the end of it. So are there commissioners who would like to make additional amendments. Yes. Yes I think if I ask a question R4 is a new zoning district is it not. But the new UDO I mean it is zone. There are portions of the city that are zoned are for now. Where are they. I was on the map and nothing popped up.
- Mean they're they're kind of scattered around But there there are lots of my shouldn't say lots. There are several areas of the city that is owned are for now Separate as miss Korodke Suggested so if he wants to do an amendment, let's do the amendment then we can look at the use specific standards See if those need to be changed based on the amendment and go that way if that's all right fair enough. I
- All right. Would you are you okay with your amendment simply being as you stated but without the forwarding of this. So just. All right. So let's just start there. The motion is to amend to remove to remove the conditional use from our one through our four. Is there a second for that motion.
- Last chance is there a second for that motion? All right, well that motion dies due to lack of a second are there other motions that commissioners would like to make at this time But for discussion is is the parking maximum say that's one space per bedroom instead of guest room because
- That's just not defined. But if somebody just wants to incorporate that into a separate motion, I don't want to consume all our time with that detail. Okay. I would second that. It's a minimum modest minimal. Sure. All right. So we have a motion in the second on changing the the word bedroom to guest room.
- I'm sorry guest room to bedroom. All right Any discussion on that amendment? All right, can we Jackie have a comment Comment on that yes. Yes got it So any public comment on the amendment to change the word guest room to bedroom
- All right, seeing none back to the council, let's call the roll on that amendment. Ballard. Yes. Burrell. Yes. Seaborg. Yes. Korotky. Yes. Holmes. Yes. Kinsey. Yes. Smith. Yes. Whistler. Yes. All right. That motion carries and the amendment is adopted. Any other motions at this time?
- Either amendments or or a motion to to forward to council. I think we should do something but it's made up for this discussion. I want to discuss it. I think one to four family are one to our four should have something. I think this is a step too far for right now and I don't know what that is. I think I think a person living in our one to our four should be able to have a roommate or two and they should be able to do it simply not with
- a bunch of oversight and expensive permits. So I guess my amendment would be an R1 through R4, and I'm really thinking R3, but I'm not sure where R4 is, so I'll leave it in there, is that maybe you have two roommates, and it has to be single room occupancy or something like that, literally instead of two people per room. Because I just realized, I was on planning commission a long time ago when a guy had a caretaker in this house who was paying rent, we kicked him out. We wouldn't give it to him. We wouldn't let the person stay.
- And I've realized at that point that when I asked the question about having roommates, if you live there, and Anna Killian Hanson corrected me that I'd actually, I'd been a part of one of those. So I think it should be allowed somehow. So I guess my motion is, can we have a discussion on how we could do that?
- Well, I think it back to staff and say come back next month Yeah, I mean, I think if if I don't think what you proposed is specific enough to write it as an amendment So I think if that's what you want to happen The motion would be to continue this to and ask staff to come up with something a little more Palatable for our one for our four instead of just completely taking it out Palatable meaning two people three people instead of ten. I don't know pick a number All right
- Commission make a motion, you know, if you feel like there is a different number then somebody would make a motion for that number I Mean we've given for tonight our recommendation that we feel is best in keeping with the resolution If the Planning Commission wants to change the specifics of those that's that's up to you but I would recommend that somebody make a motion for a specific change so I I just just just want to Try to give a little bit of direction here. I think
- Commissioner Smith Has already moved that we continue this And I think I agree it's not wise for us to try to Write legislation on the fly here in the middle of a meeting So if we think there are this issue and others that that need to be addressed I think the prudent thing is to continue
- And commissioners just maybe take some time between now the next meeting to draft something specific that you can offer now when we come to the next meeting If this should carry is there a second for the motion to continue this to our next meeting All right any discussion on that motion We want to then discuss
- What we would like staff to come back. Yes, I think it's very if if this if this motion should carry then I think we we need to either give staff some direction staff has already stated this is This is the form that they prefer. So I think it is really on individual commissioners if they want to see additional changes to work with staff to draft amendments that can be presented in written form at our next meeting and
- And and certainly I think staff is willing to help with that But we don't want to if we're going to continue this I want to make sure that everyone knows what we're coming back here with and what and what changes we want to see at the next meeting so that we don't end up Having the same conversation again about how you know, we're not we're not ready to move this along so I think you could if you want to make comment now on things you'd like to see changed get those into the record and
- But I don't think we should just expect that staffs gonna go draft all these amendments for us It's on us as commissioners to to make sure we have those changes ready at the next meeting Okay, so if I'll just start out by saying I think some exploration about the this notion of nonprofit only is an interesting one and I'm not sure if that's looking at benchmarking other communities
- And if that's something we see other places, I'm not sure if it's anywhere else as it applies to residential housing in Bloomington. But I think that's an interesting concept because of the barriers it would take that would maybe help eliminate these savvy buyers and who might
- Find a way to sidestep the owner occupancy requirement and Yeah, okay, I'll just I'll wrap it up there nonprofit exploring that concept all right, mr. Kinsey good I'm gonna support some of my
- commissioner colleagues here who have indicated some support for the conditional use as a legitimate way to safeguard these practices. And I think that is something that we should, I would like to see maintained in this. So for me, the conditional use is a way to both consider what it is that people are trying to do with this expansion of housing, and it's a way to safeguard it.
- I am with, I do think this is an appropriate BZA action and consideration. So I am fine with the conditional use, and I also feel that that allows us to keep track of it as well. I know it's onerous, it can be onerous. Well, it is onerous for the person who's proposing it. And I don't like that part of it, but I do think it is a way for us to safeguard some of the concerns that were raised here today.
- The other, for the permitted, the additional permitted uses in the ME and MD, I think those are fine. It seems like we're in agreement with that. I agree about the pursuing a concern about nonprofit only. I think that is a way to, that prioritizes
- organizations that are trying to build cooperative housing. I know that that is an important element of this refinement. So I think that's an important dimension. So keeping that in. And I also have some concern about the number of bedrooms. And I probably am more favorable toward three than five.
- Just given some of the mathematics that people were able to do here with What that would do to increase so I would probably be more favorable to a three-bedroom limit across and Yeah, those are probably that's probably it for me Thank you any other comments from commissioners Spoken
- I like the idea of two bedrooms, one person per bedroom and our one through four. I think it's a baby step and it would greatly increase bedroom counts opportunities in this town if people took it. I can be palatable. All right. Try move this conversation to the plan commission luncheon. So if there's any other follow up or anything else we need to resolve we can kind of do that.
- During that meeting and kind of be more efficient with our time as we come back and talk about this again So that would only be my kind of recommendation Thanks many other comments commissioner seabor Reflecting on your words earlier that this is gonna go to City Council and they're gonna have their say so a part of me just wants to be mindful of our time, but I also be mindful of their time at the same
- And I think just the other concern on my mind is if we are saying it to let me get to two or three That's essentially allowed already anyway, so I don't know what that's getting us so I'm just tempted personally to not continue it and just to get it to City Council, but I'll defer to the Commission as a whole Yeah, just as a reminder that the motion is to continue to the September meeting if you think we should try to pass it along tonight then
- You're welcome to vote no on that motion. State code requires that you pass this to city council 60 days after they created it. So that was July 16th. So your September meeting is within that window, but the window ends the next Sunday. So, you know, as you're having thoughts kind of like Andrew saying, or Tron mentioned, you know, getting those to us sooner rather than later would be great. So that when we come in September,
- We can kind of have more of a gelled idea and specific issues to discuss to get that done that night. Thanks. Great. Thank you. Any other comments? I want to ask the planning department, because I do think the sentiments are this could be a BZA issue. And I think right now there's too many cooks in the kitchen. We've got way too many opinions flying around, I think. I think to make this, to take action with it, we make it a conditional use. Let the BZA decide.
- Planning staff think that's a Are you capable of taking that kind of load on As we've got written right now we are proposing and as a conditional use So as as you're certainly we're being on the board, you know with that as long as it meets the use specific standards Then you know, those should be reproved. You're just reviewing in essence the location
- you know, is that location appropriate for an SRO? And so that was kind of the approach that we were taking was that the BZA would undertake, you know, an aspect of review of this for the location. And again, just making sure it meets all the use specific standards. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Last call for comments before we call the roll on the motion to continue.
- All right. Again, the motion is to continue to the September meeting. Yes vote means we continue and discussion on this ends tonight. If you a no vote means we continue and tonight until we have another motion that passes. So let's call the roll on the motion to continue this to the September meeting. Burrell. Yes. Seaborg. No.
- Rodkey. Yes homes. Yes Kinsey. Yes Smith. Yes Whistler Yes Ballard, yes All right that motion carries. So this petition is continued to our September meeting. We will now move on To our next petition this evening zeo-1 8-25 again
- We have Eric Grulick to present. Actually, come quick. I'm gonna just move that we take a quick five minute recess because we've been here for a couple hours and I know a few of us probably need a quick break. So I move that we break for five minutes. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we'll be back in five minutes.
- And again, we are now introducing Petition ZO 18-25. And Eric Grulick is here to present. Thank you.
- Eric Grulick, development services manager here to present the second petition for tonight. So this is another amendment to the use table list. And this is in regards to the possible inclusion of a new use called urban agriculture commercial. So this would supplement the use table to create this new use. So we do currently have a use called urban agriculture non-commercial, which is a permitted use in every zoning district. We've had some desire
- from the community to incorporate a new use that would allow for some expanded resources, some additional capabilities on properties within the city. So we are proposing to add a new use called urban agriculture commercial. It is proposed to be a conditional accessory use. So what that means is that it has to be an accessory use to a permitted use on the property as well, first and foremost. And then secondary,
- also has to receive conditional use approval.
- So what we're proposing tonight is simply a path to create this use. So even if this use is approved within the zoning district of the city somebody who wants to initiate this use has to petition again to go to the Board of Zoning Appeals for conditional use approval to establish this use on any specific property. So as I said this is just simply creating a path within the UDO for which somebody can choose to pursue.
- some additional uses for this. So as we mentioned last time or last month really I guess specifically as we were discussing some of these use table amendments and why are we bringing forward some of these as we mentioned last month changes to the use table carry with it a lot of a requirement for public notification. So there's a lot of changes to the use table that we have just kind of been sitting on for a long time because
- with requiring notification everybody in the city we want to make sure that we're doing that very judiciously and mindful of time and money that is spent on that. And so as we had with a lot of the uses previously that were related to automobile uses within the U.D.O. that had been on our list to remove you know this has also been on our list to look at adding to the U.D.O. We've had a lot of documents that have been passed.
- Lately certainly the comprehensive plan and then also the climate action plan that encouraged the planning department.
- and the city as a whole to pursue a lot of different goals within the community. Food and agriculture and urban agriculture are certainly one of those that are mentioned several times. The comprehensive plan talks about food and agriculture and incorporating that within the city expanding the ability for that within this city has a lot of benefits certainly for climate change. And then also in the comprehensive plan it specifically talks about creation of urban of agricultural zoning district.
- districts and permitted urban agriculture uses within existing zoning districts. One of the action steps that is also in the comprehensive plan against specifically acts encourages us to assess the creation of agricultural zoning districts and or permitted
- permitted urban agriculture uses within existing zoning districts are climate action plan that was just passed a few years ago as well encourages revising the zoning ordinances to removing barriers to urban agriculture.
- green job skills creation. So being able to teach people how to do some of these things is something that the Climate Action Plan encouraged. And so as I mentioned, this has been something that's been on our list for a while. With a lot of things in the UDO, we hear comments from members of the community of, it sure would be nice if this was there or that. And while we have annual amendments to the UDO that attempt to resolve some of those things or make situations different or change the law, because we
- We only do this once every few years. You know this is just kind of sat for a while. And so as I mentioned we are proposing to incorporate a new use urban agriculture commercial that would be a conditional use in the single family districts and the multifamily districts and then permitted use in all of the other districts. So we heard this in July and as with the single room occupancy.
- We have made some minor modifications to the use but I'll recall it real quickly just kind of go through what the legislation was proposing and allowing and then just kind of step through some of the changes. So in the July petition we went through some of the changes that we were proposing for this new use including
- at allowing for greenhouses to be a little bit taller. There was a component with this use that allows for a number of a limited number of employees and a limited number of students for educational classes that are being run on the site. And then.
- We have changed a little bit of those rules and regulations that are being proposed in response to some of the comments that we heard last time. So one of those changes that are being proposed is in relation to noise and outdoor work activity that is allowed. So we're proposing the old language just said sunrise to sunset. We're proposing specific times from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. to slightly reduce the amount of time that outdoor work activity that involves power equipment
- or generators may occur within. And then last time we did talk a little bit about the number of employees and customers that were being proposed with this legislation. And we're not proposing to change the ratio. So the proposal is still one employee or volunteer per minimum lot size of the district. So what that means is if you're in an R2 zoning district and the minimum lot size is 7,200 square feet and your lot is 7,200 square feet,
- one employee. So the change that we're proposing now though versus what was heard in July is regardless of the property size there is a maximum of three employees or volunteers that are allowed on the property. Previously we had a.
- Similar to the employee restriction, there is a restriction on the number of students that can be enrolled in classes on the site. The proposal is two people per minimum size of the district. We have modified that to have a maximum cap of eight students, regardless of the size of the property. So that is another new change. And then that is the extent of changes within those three areas there, just to change the
- Hours of operation that can occur for outdoor activities and then introducing maximum caps on the uses on the site. So I thought it might be helpful just to kind of give a side by side comparison of what the UDO allows for now and then what this
- change to introduce this new land use what that would allow for. So currently the urban agriculture non-commercial use you're allowed 15 foot tall greenhouses. This proposed legislation allows for 20 foot tall greenhouses. This is in keeping with the maximum height of accessory structures that is allowed in the residential districts. So you can have sheds you can have garage detached garages that can be 20 feet tall. So we just kind of match that height.
- for the greenhouses currently urban agriculture non-commercial greenhouses are limited to 25 percent of the property. This change for the new legislation would allow for greenhouses to occupy 50 percent of a property non-commercial restricts retail sales to one hundred and eighty one hundred and eighty days a year. The urban agriculture commercial uses would be
- allowed year round retail. So that would be only though these are this is still restricted to only things that are grown on the site. You know this is not a farmers market situation where everybody can bring in their stuff to the site. You can only sell the things that are grown on site. That's a restriction that applies to either use regardless.
- So the urban agriculture non-commercial does not allow for any employees does not allow for any outdoor educational component. So that these last two things were really some of the main driving points of why we were proposing to change this legislation.
- Certainly, there is an allowance within the you do now for what's called a home occupation, where you can, you know, have a quasi commercial use on a property whether that's accounting or massage therapy or yoga or whatever.
- But you have to go through a conditional use approval to allow that if you have employees or customers that are visiting there. However with the home occupation it doesn't allow for any outdoor component. So everything has to happen within a house. And so that was a challenge that we had run into with this particular use because this use by its nature involves outdoor gardening. And so you know in order to really kind of realize that best and teach that best you do have to be outside. So this use urban agriculture commercial
- So it allows for employees and allows for out outdoor education. So that's really kind of the main difference of why this legislation is important and why it differentiates from other uses within the UDO that wouldn't be allowed within the current UDO. And so.
- There is a new definition that is being proposed with this use that has not changed from what was heard last time. So with that we are recommending that the plan commission for this petition to the common council with the favorable recommendation. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you Eric. Are there any questions from commissioners. Mr. Smith.
- Is this like the other thing we just talked about where it's a council request it's a resolution from them asking us to make this change where this come from. No as I mentioned this is something that's just been on our list of you know if you amend the use table at some point we should look at incorporating this because we've got a lot of documents that kind of support expanding the uses within the UDO. We've had a couple of inquiries from members of the community over the past years and so it's just been on the long list of things to look at incorporating.
- Questions how did you come with the number of capping employee volunteers and also people on site that that was just kind of looking at it from a realistic kind of standpoint of you know three employees on the site really seems to be able to number to to manage regardless of what's going on there. You know half of the intent of this and with a lot of
- regulations that give a quasi commercial use within a residential area. You know we certainly want to be very mindful of trying to maintain that residential character of an area and not letting things get you know kind of too much outside of that balance. So just placing overall caps you know somebody might have a really big property but we still want to maintain you know kind of the residential look and feel of an area. So three employees certainly seem like a reasonable amount. Likewise eight.
- Students in a class certainly seemed an appropriate amount as well. Both of those things kind of help control a number of cars number of traffic that is coming and going from a site. So it just kind of seemed to be an appropriate number to match. But as we mentioned with the previous petition you know if the playing commission feels a different number should be incorporated or suggested that's certainly in your purview. Just a quick follow up to that. Does that relate to the retail sales at all.
- Or in terms of if there's year rounds sales available is that so those numbers were not necessarily you know the retail sales. It was not really being mindful of that specifically but more of you know number of students and then you know number of employees. OK. Thank you. Other questions from commissioners Commissioner Seabourn I guess just maybe
- Two questions I think so one is the 20 foot height for greenhouses came from that matches the same height as a ADU or accessory structure.
- Yeah for an accessory structure. So in all the things are the all the R1 R2 R3 R4 the maximum height for an accessory structure is 20 feet. So we were just matching that you know as some planned commission members might recall from last hearing there was an individual that came to speak that said you know 20 foot is really an important height for greenhouses as it helps keep the heat distribution away from the tops of the plants.
- So but in general you know we're just matching the height for the accessory structures and accessory structures besides greenhouses as proposed. There's a maximum footprint of the size that what's that dimension. Yeah. So the maximum cumulative size for accessory accessory structures varies based on the zoning district in the art.
- To district for instance 840 square feet is the maximum size for enclosed accessory structures. So that's why it's important to have a different regulation here for a greenhouse because we want to allow for something more than that 840 square feet. You know they don't have to do that. It's just a maximum cap again to try to serve as a check and balance on a property. And then I did a quick Google search but you might know better.
- How tall is a typical single story residential home. One story single is probably about 20 feet. I mean it just depends obviously on the pitch of the roof and your ceiling heights. You know it could be 20 feet could be 25. Thank you. The accessory when we talk about accessory structures.
- Are they going to have to follow setbacks and yes a greenhouse. So so in the urban agriculture commercial language the use specific standards there are specific setbacks for greenhouses. Those have a 10 foot setback requirement. Thank you. The accessory and I mentioned this at our last meeting in that this
- is identified as see a conditional accessory with use specific standards applied across the residential districts. But we didn't really talk about the permitted use in the mixed use which is also obviously new because we're creating this whole new urban agricultural commercial. But I wonder if Eric you can just confirm that there hasn't been concern or
- opposition raised about those permitted uses in the mixed use areas. Does that square with your sense.
- Yeah so so within the mixed use districts you know there are certainly some uses that do occupy that do carry out this activity now you know whether they're small orchards that are on a property you know greenhouses you know nurseries landscape businesses you know it doesn't matter what you're growing or you know whether it's in a building certainly these there are some of these that exist currently you know so the use specific scene is for a number of employees and classes you know there is a specific note that it's only applicable in the single
- family districts. So those use specific standards wouldn't apply in the mixed use. Okay. Okay. But we are expanding within the mixed use to at least a couple of those where it's not.
- necessarily happening already. I mean it just depends of what the exact use is. You know a lot of this could just be classified retail now and would be allowed if somebody wanted to do something like this. You know they'd have a specific limitation on setbacks and impervious surface coverage that might get them a little bit differently. Whereas the greenhouses do allow a little bit additional coverage you know if they were running up against some of those uses would be
- perhaps expanded beyond what they're able to do. They could be sure. OK. All right. OK. Thank you. I've got a couple of questions. It seems that the primary difference between a urban agriculture commercial and urban urban agriculture non-commercial is that you're selling the produce from your that you're producing.
- Is that well so that the main difference is for what we're introducing now and that was what I was trying to highlight a little bit was that it allows for employees and allows for an outdoor education component in the year round retail sales. Those would be the big things that are being accomplished with the urban agriculture commercial versus the existing use urban agriculture noncommercial. So what is the difference then between urban agriculture noncommercial and my garden.
- So so that would be it's open to other people. You know you can grow anything you want on your property. You when other people start coming there is when the UDO has different restrictions. So if my neighbor comes over for a basket of tomatoes am I supposed to be registered as a urban agriculture non commercial. Not necessarily but you know it's allowed and you don't need any approvals to do that. So there's no problem with that.
- So I'm still not understanding then what is really the difference. I mean so the difference. The difference is that there is no path within the UDO now if somebody wants to conduct classes from their property that would be outside of the house. That's that is the main difference. OK. There's no you know so that's what we've run into with the home occupation.
- of restriction is that it says you have to do everything inside of a house. You know you can't do any portion of the home occupation outside of the building. And so with an urban agriculture use if you're trying to conduct classes on your property that are not inside of a building if you want to go out and legitimately show somebody you know how to plant something how to do composting or how to do whatever you know you can't do that. There is not a path for that to be allowed at all. OK. Have we have we had.
- cases where we have cited a homeowner for holding a class in their in their garden. Yes. And we find them for that. We are working through that. Yes. OK. My next question is this is accessory use only. Right. Can't be primary use.
- Right. So yes you have to live there. There has to be a dwelling unit there first and then this is an accessory used to that. Right. But in addition you also have to get conditional use approval. And so the in the in the commercial definition the maximum for greenhouses is 50 percent. I'm guessing those don't count as impervious surface do they.
- Yeah. So that's that's a great question. We would count that as impervious surface because you've got a hard covering over it. Because not everything that's in there is going to be dirt. You know you might have things in pots and the rest of it's a concrete floor or something like that. So it is impervious. And so so I have to have a house and I have to have some 40 percent impervious service.
- It just depends on the district you know the the impervious surface coverage in the residential districts varies a little bit from. So I guess I mean my question is just realistically is anybody ever going to get 50 percent of a lot covered with greenhouses if they have to have a house and 40 percent or some other percentage of impervious surface on the same lot. It would certainly be a very difficult probably combination to aggregate all of those things. OK. You know. Yeah. All right. Thanks.
- Any other questions. Good. I'm going to speak more broadly. There is a few things that are the impetus of this discussion. If this does get moved forward and adopt and adopted any operation that wants to kind of maybe
- have the urban agriculture commercial would still have to go and seek that conditional use if they're in the R1 through the RMH right. Correct. This just creates an avenue. So correct. It's not a done deal. If there's other concerns that could be addressed at the BCA level. So just wanted to kind of bring that up. And it was in line with your question. Any other questions. Commissioner Seaboard.
- And hypothetically this gets approved as presented with a maximum of three employees per property. If that got approved would it be fair. Right now our home occupation caps it at one employee that doesn't live in the residence. So this got approved would it be fair to say I guess does the three employees include residents I guess is the first question and then the second is if this got approved with three would it be fair to say home occupations. Why wouldn't they also be allowed to have three employees.
- So the person the owner of the property would not be counted as an employee historically. So I'm sorry. So what was your second question. Second question is if three non residents were allowed to be employees in this use would it be fair for three non residents to be employees in a home occupation use.
- So I mean that would be a different change to the home occupation standards. You know we had not considered we hadn't really run into that problem with that use you know nine times out of 10 with the home occupations. It is a very by.
- nature of what we've seen so far very low number of people very rarely are is there an employee. You know most of the time it's a person who lives there and they're doing something there they might have an employee you know sometimes I think we've seen that with maybe a barbershop or hair salon you know people that cut hair they might have one employee. So again it's just kind of a mix of.
- you know, trying to maintain the residential character of a neighborhood and a house and a property. However, with the use that is outside, you know, you might have a lot more need for maintenance of a property on a year round basis or an annual basis. And so one employee may not do that if you've got a larger property. So that's why the number of employees was based on the lot size. You know, if you've got a small lot, you know, one person's appropriate for that, you know, and if you've got a lot of property acres,
- You know we still want to try to have a maximum cap so that you know 12 people work in a piece of ground that you know might be eight acres in size still is a little bit more than what we wanted to see. So that's why the maximum cap for employees of three was introduced just to try to serve as an overall cap for the property as a whole regardless of the lot size. Thank you. Any other questions from commissioners.
- All right. We are then on to public comment on Zio dash one eight dash twenty five. If you are here in the chambers and you'd like to make comment please step up to the podium please sign your name to the list that is there at the podium and state your name for the record as well. If you're joining us online and you would like to make comment please click on the raise hand button or send a chat message to the meeting host and we will recognize you when it is your turn to speak.
- You have up to five minutes to speak. The countdown will be on the screen and I'll try to give you a warning as it gets close to time to wrap up. But please go ahead and make your comments. Hi my name is Ellie Spear. There are countless rules local county state and national that we're expected to follow to be considered outstanding citizens. But how are residents supposed to know if they're doing something wrong.
- Illegal or simply out of protocol unless they've had the opportunity to learn how to do it right in the first place So who do residents turn to for that guidance? Unfortunately, our city employees are overwhelmed Overworked and expected to be generalists in order to keep our city functioning with so many
- So many things already on their plates. They rarely have time to provide hands on demonstrations or guidance on the latest updates to the UDO. That's why I implore you to consider this proposed ordinance as a tool to bridge the educational gap. Whether someone wants to plant a tree build a chicken coop or divert water runoff. There's a risk they'll do it incorrectly without ever knowing until someone files a complaint.
- Instead of relying with a slap on a hand or a fine, let's proactively empower our neighbors. Let's celebrate the expertise that already exists in Bloomington's neighborhoods and give residents opportunities to share what they've learned with the broader community. Imagine a future where a Habitat for Humanity family can take hands-on landscaping and gardening courses, not just in a classroom, but in real yards, in real neighborhoods.
- When they're ready to make decisions about their homes, they'll have practical knowledge and confidence built from learning in spaces that reflect their own. Learning from an experienced neighbor with a thriving garden or water management system could set them up for long-term success. Or picture the future of Hopewell neighborhood.
- One where the city zoning aligns with our stated goals in the climate action plan and the comprehensive plan. We could build a neighborhood where food security sovereignty accessibility and neighborhood based education are not just values but design principles a neighborhood built for collaboration not just coexistence. And why is the Bloomington Garden Club annual walk so beloved.
- Because residents want to learn by seeing what works in real homes by observing not only successes but also the lessons learned from mistakes. This accessory use ordinance would allow more residents to share their experiences on a broader scale. Removing zoning barriers to urban agriculture brings us closer to becoming a blue zone city a place where citizens live longer health and have healthier lives because their cities are designed for food accessibility education and community.
- When it comes to safety, consider this, planning and transportation staff simply don't have time to walk residents through every step of soil testing, nor keep track of the best, most affordable labs for home growers. But a local educational urban farm could and would. Teaching best practices like testing for heavy metals before planting is precisely the kind of community education this ordinance would ignite.
- I do encourage the commission to reconsider one point, the prohibition on processed food in both existing non-commercial urban ag guidelines and the proposed commercial ag framework. In 2022, updated in 2025, the state of Indiana resolved that home-based vendors have the right to sell approved processed foods from food grown on property, including jams, pickles, and dried herbs, from anywhere, which means from residential market stands. Our local rules should reflect this reality.
- One other consideration the proposed limitation on the number of students per site since Bloomington already has a temporary permit process for neighborhood events and parties lasting more than two days. Why not extend that process to urban farms if we're going to limit this would allow them to host special educational events for schools scout troops and youth groups like Boys and Girls Club on occasion. Finally a word on language commercial evokes this
- idea of large-scale operations, which just doesn't feel right to a lot of people. Instead, how about naming this new ordinance as Educational Urban Farmstead, which is defined in common vernacular as a residential property that includes a home and land used for small-scale production and animal husbandry. These spaces may include barns, coupes, greenhouses, and other outbuildings, and they support both household sustenance and limited sales, with an emphasis on community education and sharing. Thank you for your time and consideration.
- consideration. Thank you. Hi I'm Jamie Scholl. Can I pass these along. Hi I'm Jamie Scholl I am a health coach.
- I've been active in the urban community from the very beginning and I'm on the commission for sustainability. What I'm having passed through here is something that because we'll be having on the agenda tomorrow evening. Some neighbors worry that commercial activity will disrupt beauty peace and character of their neighborhoods. Those are completely valid concerns.
- But commercial urban agriculture as proposed here is not industrial agriculture. It's small scale rooted in community and aligned with the way Bloomington has always done gardening and food sharing. This includes selling surplus produce at farm stops or the local farmers market offering value added goods such as jams or tinctures growing specialty crops like mushrooms for local restaurants or operating
- from home gardens as was originally the intention behind the Bloomington farmers market. These kinds of accessory sales from residential areas have long been assumed and now we're seeking clarity not a radical change. Clarity is everything. That's why tomorrow night the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability will vote on a resolution recommending the specific definitions for farm farmstead homestead commercial urban agriculture and more.
- John Galuska who pioneered grown in town farmstead alongside my work with my edible in taught me that without clear definitions we risk casting small scale growers and educators into the same category as large scale businesses. And that's not fair nor accurate. We have many homeowners associations in town with restricted covenants that in effect prevent residents from growing and selling food even to teach kids how to garden. These restrictions undermine food sovereignty.
- The right of communities to define and produce their own food systems as our city grows we risk increasing reliance on fragile national supply chains while limiting local equitable ways to nourish ourselves. Moreover our own policies already support what we're proposing the comprehensive plan emphasizes neighborhood resilience and local food access the unified development ordinance already permits community gardens and accessory agricultural uses.
- the sustainability action plan and the climate and sustainability progress report Having access accepted encouraged use and I have those here if anyone like me is a policy wonk that would be Four point two four point two point a four point two point G four point three point B four point three point C and four point three point E
- That includes some of this is an assumption that the community used to grow food for personal consumption or sale. That is four point two point a four point two point G facilitate a guided tour of farms and gardens within city limits to inspire and encourage acceptance of vegetative alternative practices. All of these you can refer to those. Those are in there.
- The people task force report and the food access report both highlight the need for local food resilience passing you a commercial with clear definitions ensures that a single households gardening and educational work teaching children to grow food does not become unfairly burdened or misconstrued. Instead we affirm Bloomington's commitment to beauty community and food sovereignty in every neighborhood. Let's ensure our code reflects our current sustainability goals.
- and that nurtures our children and encourages our food resilience and our future. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for listening to our comments.
- My name is Bettina Kehoe and I live in the neighborhood of Ellie spear. I'd like to tell a little bit of a story beforehand which is years ago Monroe County School Corporation wanted to redistrict and in doing so they missed a slice of the copy of the Bloomington that didn't know if it should go to the north or to the south.
- And it just so happened we lived in that neighborhood. It was a Covenanter neighborhood. So the school district held a special session in which all the members of the community were able to attend and to evaluate and make their comments if they felt they should go to the north or to Bloomington South. Similarly for such a situation where your where neighborhoods are affected in changing
- from a non-commercial to a commercial situation, I do hope there is the opportunity for neighborhoods to be assessed and for communities to speak in a specific manner. In this case, I'm specifically talking about our Covenanter neighborhood. I'd like to address a few other things that were said earlier on.
- In terms of the B as ZA, my understanding from earlier listening to that commission that in that appeal situation, only the use of the land is going to be evaluated and discussed. I'm sorry, I'm not saying that well. The land itself is going to be
- part of the main discussion not how the land is being used in terms of using the land for educational purposes. There's no reason that it has to be commercial a non-commercial situation works just as well. And as a teacher in the school systems and at the university in the past that doesn't necessarily require a commercial change. The comment about 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. as opposed to
- sunrise to dusk. If this were to come and to be a change perhaps both those things can be in the commission because frankly there are times where you really the sunrise is close to or not you know or excuse me sunset is before 7 p.m. So please think about that. Currently the Covenanter area where we're talking about having
- a potential commercial urban situation is on a main thoroughfare. I do believe that quite a number of cars can be used on that property's driveway, but to hold perhaps eight students, three employees, and the people who live there, there's no way that that can all happen without ultimately interfering with travel on the main thoroughway. And then the last point is waste.
- As a young child with the scouting system, we worked with the city of Bloomington to put tags on all of the water systems in our neighborhood to say that we don't want anything to go down into the drains that shouldn't go down into the drains. And I don't know if you've seen them. They're green and blue with a fish on them stickers. With a commercial operation that is a year-long thing,
- There is a creek very close to the house on Covenanter and there I don't know if there has been any assessment on how one would deal with waste that can flow down into the creek or nurture the plants. What does one do with the extra waste. That's something that's an important consideration for me. Thank you. Thank you.
- Is there any additional public comment. Do we have any online commenters Eric. Okay we'll go to an online comment if we have a while while we're waiting for you to make your way to the podium but feel free to come that way. I don't know if there's anybody online with the race and please use the race and function and we can recognize you. All right.
- You're up next. Yep. Please sign the sheet there and state your name for the record. He'll talk right after me so he'll be ready. I'm Connie Cook Glenn and I live on South Brooks Drive and I'm actually the closest neighbor
- as far as where the property is. Although some people may be closer across the street as far as to the house but our property abuts their property. You'll see that there are letters from us in the packet. I'll try not to duplicate it. I appreciate you reading them and listening. And it was really clear that people were listening to what we had to say at the last meeting. I thank each of you for your commitment to urban gardening.
- and to the greening of Bloomington, a really important value. We also are committed to positive ecological and educational practices in gardening. We ask you to be cognizant of all citizens' needs. I know you are, just from your comments already, as you make recommendations about zoning. A few points.
- The non-commercial UDO provision already in effect covers nearly everything that the Spear family wants. We suggest returning to urban garden non-commercial and working to find common ground so that residential property needs are met as well.
- as those of the Spears. We support the revision that stipulates the numbers for three volunteers and eight students. We think it's very wise. And the reduction in hours of operation. We wonder if these stipulations could be added to the existing non-commercial agriculture policy. The urban agricultural UDO provision includes 10 food setbacks, which we also support. If and certainly before this new proposal moves forward in any format, we request
- kind of echoing what you said, that surveys be done of citywide neighborhoods to be sure that this ordinance is desired by many in the city, not just one entity. It has become clear that the proposal itself is on behalf of one family and that it is backed by an outside corporation with a goal of anti-zoning. That's the Institute for Justice. I'm sure you've all read about it in the newspaper. We encourage the plan commission to not be cowed by outside interests and to stay away from spot zoning.
- We appreciate the changes that have been made in the proposal and think more should be included if the proposal is to be implemented in any format. Here are some thoughts and ideas. We ask for careful measurement of easements and right of way that were originally intended for sidewalks. In the case of the Spear family, an exception was granted with neighborhood support. It was before we moved there, which allowed them to not put in a sidewalk on Brookstripe. And as far as we can tell, that exception did not allow
- them to build gardening structures. We've been talking about greenhouses and frames, but there are many gardening structures that are also very obtrusive. Their property line is beyond where we would see the right of way or easement. We ask that the laws of the city be enforced, the 10 feet from all property lines. And we ask that all structures used for urban gardening, not just hoops and frames, be 10 feet from property lines and easements.
- We see structures designed to be very long term. To help clarify boundaries, I'd love to see a privacy fence along the property lines. That would be fantastic. Commercial aspects remain a concern for us. We appreciate the reduction in hours and numbers of volunteers and students, and would also like to see a reduction in number of days for educational and commercial activities. It is unclear to us, although I think it is clear now. It's 365 days, right?
- that commercial and educational activities are to be allowed with this proposal. And I mentioned my brother last time we talked that he was on the Lincoln, Nebraska City Council for 16 years. He's still very much abreast of their activities. They have eight days where commercial activities are allowed. And I encourage you to look at cities all over the place. 365 days is huge.
- That's all I can say about that. We are very concerned about parking and the commercial use of a narrow dead end street. I know some of you went out and looked at it. We request that appropriate health and safety stipulations be required. Besides the soil and the water, what about the safety stipulations of dealing with children, background checks, educational training?
- Continue to be many zoning questions. For instance, the city has set up an implied expectation with its existing residential neighborhood zoning laws.
- Property law specialist, Jeff Stix, comments are important. I'll just finish with this. People have relied on the restrictions in zoning ordinances. Think about their reliance. People buy into legal rules when they buy their homes, making them often the largest financial investment of their lives. He also said zoning laws have been constitutional for 100 years and that homeowners have a reasonable expectation that zoning changes will not happen. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn it over to my husband, Jim. Thank you.
- Yes, my name is James Glenn, and I'm connected with her. So I'm going to finish up some of the remarks we have here. She talked about Jeff Stakes. One of the reasons we're concerned about the outside entity is that we saw in a newspaper quote that
- The property needed a bigger bully to bully the city. Talking about the Institute for Justice, who's got a little bit of stake in this. And that was a quote from Matt Austin, who lives and works on the property and is Ellie's brother. We're concerned about that attitude. In response to Glenn Gass's inquiry to the Deputy Mayor Gretchen Knapp, she said, this firm does not have any control over what we propose or approve.
- for legislation. We think this is great. She also stated that while I'm a passionate gardener myself as I told the Spears the issue at stake is not whether gardening is good or whether they're enterprise nonprofit is good but whether or not it's appropriate for a neighborhood city zoning. Her note ends with Please rest assure that we are interested in promoting what is best for the entire city not individual party and in that effort resident and neighborhood
- input will always take first priority. We're concerned about the message that's being sent to prospective homeowners. Bloomington is already as low ownership rate as we know. We wonder how anyone in Bloomington could expect their neighborhood of stability if it's designated as a commercial area. So we think that the UDO principles would be important here.
- And some of those principles from the U.D. hours to protect the character and stability of residential institutional business employment and natural areas preserve and enhance the scenic beauty aesthetics and environment environmental integrity of the city to encourage the capability compatibility between different land uses and protect the scale the character of existing development from encroachment and incompatible uses.
- And even though gardening, urban gardening is a good thing. We don't disagree with that. The common good is not necessarily served by this proposal. What would it look like if urban gardening and urban gardening education were truly for the common good? And we have some thoughts and suggestions about this.
- school gardens and education where students can be educated about gardening at the schools. There's much more cost effective for the schools and a thorough way to ensure all students reserve gardening education. The Spear Home is not located in the section of Bloomington that is accessible to those experiencing food insecurity but the schools are.
- Preschool gardens and education programs, several have active programs already. We have community gardens and orchards and community groups where education can take place. The community properties, and Ellie does this already. And so these are things that are already in place. And there's also garden consultations, which are also being done by Ellie and also by Jamie. So I encourage you to look at our memo from the last meeting.
- and revisit some amendments that we had proposed at that point in addition to limiting heights of the greenhouses which 20 feet seems excessive and 50 percent of the property seems excessive suggested amendment that all greenhouse who houses agricultural stands should not be in city easements and should be at least 10 feet from all property boundaries. And we'd like to see this enforced.
- Suggested amendment is that we would require all vehicles engaged in commercial urban farming To be parked on the residential lot itself rather than on the streets and designated for neighborhood use in some cases allow parking on the street will result in blocking access in our opinion if uncontrolled the damage to Bloomington's residential areas is likely to range from adverse impact on noise overall use of residential roads
- Overuse of chemicals traffic parking congestion declining property values instability of neighborhoods and pedestrian and bicycle safety issues especially in areas with narrow streets without sidewalks and fencing. We do trust that that you will provide appropriate laws and zoning for these areas and my time is up. That's your time. Thank you. Any additional public comment.
- We do have one person online who requested to go. Let's go ahead and take the next person here and then we'll go to the online commenter after this. Hi. My name is Andrew Mohan. I have already provided a written statement that is part of the public record.
- I would like to reiterate today that this amendment is not simply about the value of urban agriculture or about the benefits of organic gardening or the quality of local produce or about the contribution of education. Yes, for the record,
- All of those are worthwhile things. The salient point here is about where all of this is happening. We are arguing that it should not be in a residential neighborhood.
- We neighbors on Brooks Drive believe that we are already a test case of how a large agricultural enterprise would work in a residential neighborhood. It's fair to say that the success of such a venture would depend on any urban farming household running their farm with an eye to neighborly coexistence by restricting their infrastructure to the bounds of their property.
- That's not what we are experiencing on our street and we recount our experience as an example of what may well happen around the town if this amendment passes who will enforce the boundaries of the farm. And that's my question. Thank you. Go ahead sir. And then we'll go to the online commenter after after this one.
- Yes, my name is Daniel Conkle. I live on 2109 covenant East covenant or drive. I really have only one comment that if the commission decides to forward this proposal, I would think about the idea of restricting this to nonprofit as was suggested in discussing the previous petition. That would be one idea to in fact limit the scope and operation of any urban farming.
- Which is consistent with Connie Glenn's suggestion. I think potentially putting the educational components into the existing provisions with respect to non commercial urban farming. I still haven't seen the justification for commercial as Ellie Spears suggests herself. You know the name suggests something maybe not being contemplated by the Spears or by the commission or the city plan staff.
- I would suggest that it could be defined in such a way to as to only incorporate nonprofit. At least that would be one suggestion to perhaps limit the scope of the proposal. So I'll have to suggest. Thank you. Thank you. Eric let's go to the online comment and then we'll come back and wrap up anyone else here in the chambers that wants to make comment. Juan Carlos you should be able to speak.
- Hi, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we got you. Okay. So we're on Juan Carlos's computer. My name is Robert Furu and I really wanted to express a strong support for amending the UDO to allow a path as you mentioned earlier for commercial urban ag in Bloomington or as we call it small scale farming.
- You know, it's not just about growing food, it's really about growing community and resilience. If you allow small-scale farming in the city, we can increase access to fresh and healthy, culturally relevant foods for many residents, including those who live in areas without gracious stores within a walking distance. And we can create local economic opportunities
- particularly for immigrants who are now a part of the scene in Bloomington. They are new neighbors. Some of them are refugees and many of them have farming experience and they would like to be able to put that experience to use and build a livelihood here in Bloomington from their home. We would be able to reduce our environmental footprint by producing food closer to where it's consumed
- and cutting transportation emissions and increasing green space that supports pollinators and stormwater management. I mean, urban ag, it aligns with Bloomington's strategic priorities, basically. I mean, it's improving public health, fostering equity, and supporting local economic growth. Those are all things that Bloomington wants. Many cities across the country, large and small, have embraced urban farming as a practical, sustainable, and community-driven solution
- to the modern food challenges all around them, not just in one neighborhood. Bloomington should join them. We already have people ready to farm here. What we need is a legal framework to let them thrive. People vote, please vote to update the UDO so that urban commercial ag or small scale farming can become a legal recognized and celebrated part of Bloomington's landscape.
- And I thank you for your time and for considering my thoughts and my words toward a more sustainable and equitable food food future for our city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- Some of us have not left our phone numbers but I will. My name is Sarah Jane Hughes and I also live on the same block on South Brooks Drive that has been the cause celeb for quite a while. Unfortunately I've listened to a lot of people talk about building community and sadly although we were very friendly
- With the Spear family for some years when they first came the ability to create community is deteriorating and it is largely deteriorating over their designs to use their property in a particular way. I love the idea that has been expressed this evening by commenters that if this were still in a non-commercial situation as opposed to a commercial situation it would make me much happier. I would endorse having education.
- activities added to the non commercial ordinance rather than creating the new one. I also will say that it strikes me as peculiar as somebody who 50 years ago trained to be a zoning lawyer but never was that anything that is allegedly accessory is supposed to be subordinate to the other major use which in this case is supposed to be residential. The lot
- The coverage the size and height of buildings and the still fairly small setbacks that are available at the moment all counter the idea of using a family a residence a community in the ways that have been described. So for us our neighborhood is at risk by this proposal and I love the idea suggested by the lady in the beautiful salmon shirt.
- Miss Kehoe that perhaps communities or neighborhoods should be able to opt in. So I had other prepared remarks and I don't think we need to have the outdoor education component lodged in a commercial venture. As I mentioned I would suggest that you all read one more time the difference between the description of this proposal on page two.
- of the document which I've left at my seat that was distributed by you and what the definition says on page 12 because there is a discrepancy on page 2. It says produce grown on the property on page 12. It speaks about products.
- Now this big difference in English and particularly in my field between produce and products. So I would urge careful attention to a possible change in the definition to be more consistent with the statements that have been made by the staff and your interests. The definition to zero point zero seven point zero one zero because they are not consistent. We did not.
- I should step back. We appreciate everything you did to listen to our comments and I myself have filed more than 20 pages of them just in the last six weeks related to this. So I know you know who I am but I also have participated in this proceeding in many ways. The proposals that were available for review last year
- by the Planning Commission by the Board of Zoning Appeals are different from this. Therefore I would suggest to you that any comment from 2024 is really not relevant and should not be part of the public record for this proposal because that was for something completely different a special permit and an appeal of a denial of a special permit.
- for the educational use aspects and not for any of the specifics of the commercial use aspects that the staff has now.
- proposed. I also would suggest if you were to look back and forward then in 2025 for the commercial proposal there is a paltry showing of support compared to a rather significant number of comments from people who live very close by about how upset we are about the idea of a commercial agricultural facility being lodged in a very established
- older Bloomington residential neighborhood where property size is pretty good but it could easily be run over. I'm not unfriendly to the idea of many of the things that are being suggested here. I think only things grown on the property should be sold. The idea that we need a 12 foot high stand is antithetical to my idea of what is in a residence and I would like to see
- some significant commitment of enforcement support before you make any decision that will affect so many people in the are one two three and four zones. Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any additional public comments. Just for the record we do have a few folks online. OK. Looks like we only have a couple more here. We'll wrap up here and then we'll go back to the online.
- Hi my name is Steve Olin and I got two points for you. The first is I had a question about the notion of three employees is that three people on the property at the same time or three people who can be employed by the property at any time. Is it three full time equivalents or can it be a bunch of part timers. I don't think that that figure is clear.
- And it's not clear whether the property who might get a permit under this law would have to submit W2 to demonstrate their how many people are employed. So something I think you need to ask about a resolve. But the reason I come to speak is as a former member of the parking commission current member of the Transportation Commission. I've heard a lot of talk for many years including tonight.
- During this issue and the prior issue members of the public objecting to changes to the neighborhood where they live on the argument that such a policy change would increase traffic or fill up available parking in more extreme cases in other cities. There are famous stories of people who will reserve on street parking with a cone.
- or with a chair who will get into fistfights over a space that they believe should belong to them because in front of their house. But the street I live on is not my street. The neighborhood I live in is not mine. The theory is that street parking and the street in general is the public right of way. It belongs to everyone. Even though there's a spot in front of my house that spot doesn't belong to me.
- If a neighborhood as the one that is objecting to some of these issues here experiences such a significant increase in traffic the city has long held a remedy for that problem. That's the neighborhood parking zone the neighborhoods the so-called core neighborhoods have been using these zones for many years to control traffic and parking. More generally though I would like to urge you and the public.
- not to indulge the idea that somehow who buy property people who buy property should be allowed to expect that their immediate surroundings or the city in general will stay the same as it was when they got there. No one has a right to expect that the city won't change around them. The issues Plan Commission take up.
- often deal with interests in the comprehensive plan that aren't mutually inclusive that conflict with each other. And your job is to resolve those issues. I think you're dealing with an example of that tonight. But I also want to point out the relative unnaturalness of the single family neighborhood they and single use
- uses around a city generally were really only made possible because of the advent of the car. We should have smaller markets in more places in the city and not supermarkets or warehouse clubs be the only places where we can shop. This is how it was before the car. This is why it was when Kirkwood was still a residential neighborhood before say the 1930s.
- We should have such units closer to single family neighborhoods even in single family neighborhoods. There will be in my opinion no traffic jams caused by this policy. I think it'd be ironic if you were to disallow uses like this in the name of avoiding the arrival of cars from outside the neighborhood. Whatever you do please don't base policy on vague concerns like traffic and parking.
- We have the tools to address those issues. We should use them if that's the issue. If not let's get to the real issue. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and take I think we said we're going to take some online comments. Yeah we're taking more here in the in the chamber. So let's go and do that and then we'll get right back to you. Pam Weaver you should be able to speak now. All righty thank you.
- So I wanted to refer back to some of the comments that have been made. I kind of want to support the notion that any kind of farming locally at this moment when the weird tariff things in the national supply chains are wonky, I think is something that we should try to support because
- people making their own food is, is been a way to fix that for decades. So I think we should generally support that. Um, I wasn't familiar with this. Evidently there's one bad actor, uh, in one neighborhood. And I, I hope we don't throw the baby out with the bath water, uh, because there's one bad actor and want to support the idea of enforcement, whatever we have. I think that the,
- The idea of adding this as a possibility with its related enforcement regulations might actually help that situation if the enforcement is enforced. I just want to hope that we remember that that's not the only place where this might happen, is on that one piece of property in the city. Also, when Robert Fru spoke,
- He should have said more about the program that he works on and has gotten grants for, which is amazing. He's been hiring out at their farm immigrants, not immigrants, refugees, actually. He teaches them sustainable ways of growing and allows them to have a piece of property of their own.
- and grow things from their own native countries. And one of the things that he mentioned to me was this idea of urban agriculture on a piece of property like my own, for example, in Bryant Park, where I have a giant yard with grass. And from both of a climate and sustainability point of view, I really dislike having grass.
- on a big lot and would prefer to have a garden, but I am not a gardener. And so I for one would be happy to loan or make an agreement with one of the folks that are in the sober Mesa farm program to come and farm on my property. And I think that would be fantastic. So a question for me is, does the farmer have to be an owner?
- on the property and I hope not because not all of us owners who would like to to loan our property out for this kind of thing are farmers or want to be. Let's see what else was on my list here. I think that again, I heard issues about boundaries and that again is an enforcement issue.
- And I think that applies to both non-commercial or commercial from what I can tell. So anyway, I just would hope that you would vote yes to this. I think making rules about it is fine, keeping the 10 feet back, whatever. But again, let's not make that one really bad actor put the kibosh on urban farming throughout the city. Thanks a lot. That's it for me. Thank you.
- Hello, can you hear me? This is Richard Millichick, and I live on First Street. And I'm just dialing in to be supportive of this measure. I think as a community, it's super important to support any small business and educational opportunities. And this is a fantastic opportunity for the community to support these kinds of activities. Everything can't be multi-large national
- corporations and the small businesses that are the backbone of our communities across the board. And this is a great example in addition to the educational opportunities that may be available to students of any type. And that's my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Jesse Gilmore, you should be able to speak.
- All right. Thank you. My name is Jesse Gilmore. I am currently an MPA student at IU and Public Affairs and before that I worked for eight years with local food producers both as a producer myself and as an advisor. I can't speak because I'm not a homeowner to the
- concerns of homeowners dealing with this in their immediate area and I'm not going to say that their concerns aren't valid because I I can't relate. But I can approach the standards from the perspective of someone who has
- worked on urban agriculture farms before. So there are a couple of considerations that I would like to put forward to the plan commission. These are by no means vital to the passing of the standards as they are currently written, but might be things to keep in mind for potential amendments if this set of standards does move forward. The first was in B2 under the standards.
- It talks about controlling water runoff from draining onto the adjacent property. And it was unclear to me whether or not that means stormwater or irrigation water or both. The difference might seem a little pedantic, but one will have a lot more impact on how the business is or how the agricultural site is designed. Whereas the irrigation water runoff specifically just
- entails management. It doesn't necessarily entail design. The second thing that I wanted to bring up is in C2 when it talks about metal content in the soil is exceeding a healthy threshold. It brings up raised beds, but it doesn't bring up container gardening. So the only acceptable way to grow on a lot with
- Heavy metal contaminated soil would be raised beds as the standards are currently written. In a lot of my past experience, especially with advising urban agriculture businesses, they rely a lot on containers, especially in potentially contaminated soil. One thing that I specifically included in my idea as far as wording goes is containers labeled for plant use, because producers can get very creative, and that's a kind way of putting it,
- with how they are growing their plants. I had one property I was responsible for advising back when I lived in Southeast Kansas, who grew plants in 50 different ceramic bathtubs in their backyard. So having it listed as containers labeled for plant use allows for the use of containers without getting out of control with how creative we can be with the container type that we're growing in.
- I also want to reiterate what was mentioned previously about aligning the definitions, especially with other parts of the code. In the definition provided in the standards, it talks about aquaponics and aquaculture, which includes the raising of fish combined with the plants that you are also growing. However, at the end of the standard, it talks that
- Urban agriculture shall not include the raising of animals except as permitted elsewhere in the Bloomington Code. So if fish are not mentioned elsewhere in the Bloomington Code, aquaponics and aquaculture are disallowed as potential urban agriculture issues. Now, in my experience, they are not very common, especially compared to just pure plant growing. So if that is something that you want to provide special exemptions for instead of rewriting the definition, that would also be understandable.
- that is going to come up very often. The last thing that probably confused me the most when reading through the standards is how the standards that we are proposing relate to the orchard standard in 20.03.030D3. And I think there needs to be some mention of that because if you are trying to grow tree fruit in particular,
- Under the definition in the standards as they're proposed that that tree fruit growing could apply under orchard work. I think we lost you. Are you still there.
- Eric do we still have Jesse are you able to come back. We can go on to the next person if he is able to speak again. Joe W. You should be able to unmute. Hi Joseph when you're here I am a resident of the city of Bloomington.
- And I would like to speak in support of the proposed urban agriculture commercial land use. I also spoke at the July meeting. So this time I will just focus on two things. The first is to reiterate that we are in the midst of a destabilizing climate and that diversifying and increasing our options to produce food is absolutely a smart thing to do. The second is just that in the new proposed maximum of eight students,
- in section B6 strikes me as potentially problematic since it would prevent local schools and in particular elementary schools from being able to bring their students because I'm assuming that an average class is around 20 to 30 students. So requiring them to limit a potential field trip to eight students would effectively remove that option for them. So I would hope that to achieve to help achieve the goal of providing agricultural education
- that a whole class of from the local school system would be able to visit an urban agriculture setting. So those are the only two points I have. So I'll just say again in summary that I strongly support the proposal and I hope the commission sees its value as well. Thank you. Thank you. We have one last person online. Wendy Bernstein. Hi. I'm a person who takes walks as
- and goes by Brooks Lane because I think it's so pretty and by the Spears farm, which I love. And so I am writing to say, I'm calling to say how disappointed and sad I am at the discomfort that so many people have expressed about Ellie and Matt and Spear and family's family farm. I,
- Whenever I go by there, it is such a delight to see what they have accomplished, what they're growing. I see the chickens. I wanna say how happy I am that there's no rooster to disturb the peace of the neighbors. I don't feel that there are bad actors in this process. I think there are lots of people with good intentions. And I sincerely hope that somehow,
- We can support urban farming and help make the Spears Wonderful experiment successful in a way that doesn't upset the neighbors. And I hope that the neighbors aren't just finding every argument they can against this because of some initial discomforts that weren't that bad. But whenever I go by, I've never seen any sign
- and I don't go by that often, it's just on walks, but I haven't seen tremendous disruption of life in the neighborhood. So I sincerely hope that the frustrations, disappointments and bits of anger that have arisen can be resolved by community building and creative problem solving and finding some synthesis, lots of different solutions
- to make urban farming in Bloomington a great success. On the west side, I often go by and see wonderful examples of gardens and chickens in the backyard. So I sincerely, sincerely hope that any acrimony can be diminished. Please don't call people bad actors. There's nothing but good intentions on Covenanter and Brooks Lane.
- So please, please work to positively resolve this issue and have very constructive growing of wonderful organic produce and whatever animals are there. Thank you. Thank you. If our previous commenter has, I'm sorry ma'am, you're not recognized at this time. If we go back to our previous commenter,
- If they've established connection I think they had about 30 seconds remaining if they want to continue their their comments. I actually did hear from in chat his iPhone overheated. OK. But he said he was done. All right. OK. Thank you. All right. So we are back now to hear in the chambers if there's anyone else would like to make public comment please step up state your name and please sign in on the sheet there as well. So we have that for the record and you have five minutes to speak.
- Penny Austin and I didn't think that this was just a change in the laws for one family. I believe that this change was for the community of Bloomington for the good of Bloomington where everyone is concentrating on a neighborhood issue. But this is a citywide
- a citywide proposal. The city wants more agriculture. They want to control climate change. They want to do all sorts of things for the community. This is not a one family site. The commission. Anyway, you're looking at the whole community and not at one little
- Thank you. Matthew Austin. Hello commissioners and fellow residents. I stand before you today to discuss a crucial initiative for our community.
- the incorporation of urban agriculture education in residential neighborhoods. This proposal represents more than just gardening. It is a pathway to enhance our collective future health well and well-being grounded in the commitments outlined in both the Bloomington comprehensive plan and the climate action plan. In 2015 the city of Bloomington Common Council endorsed the Bloomington food charter which recognizes food security as a basic human right. This charter calls for collaborations among local government
- businesses and community groups to ensure a sustainable local food system. Urban AG plays a critical role in this effort advocating for community gardens rooftop gardens many other things including educational initiatives that empower our residents while fostering shared community values. I understand that there are concerns among some community members regarding increased traffic safety issues noise and other potential disruptions incorrectly associated with urban agriculture.
- While these worries are natural, the fear-mongering and far-fetched stories neighbors have created in their minds are laughable. I remember neighbors worrying about homeless encampments popping up because of a proposed bike station on the corner of Brooks and Covenanter. That is absolutely ridiculous and did not happen. I encourage all of us to examine the assumptions behind these fears and stories. The initiatives before us do not propose operations that would attract large crowds.
- Rather they promote small scale neighborhood based educational activities that invite families to come together to learn about food cultivation. This type of engagement is not a threat is an opportunity for us to connect and support one another in healthier living. When addressing safety concerns we should remember that urban farming encourages responsible practices that can enhance our community by involving residents in caring for gardens and educating others.
- We nurture a culture of ownership and vigilance that can lead to safer neighborhoods. An engaged community is often a vigilant one, working together to create an environment that fosters caring relationships. It is important to acknowledge that resisting initiatives aimed at improving our quality of life can come from a place of selfishness. Urban agriculture offers us immense benefits, access to fresh, nutritious food, the promotion of sustainable practices, and the opportunity to strengthen community ties.
- The educational benefits extend beyond individual plots. They contribute to the public health and the overall environmental health of our community. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wisely noted, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. If we decline to facilitate educational opportunities about urban agriculture, we deny our fellow residents not only better nutrition, but also the joy of shared experiences in learning and cultivation. Rejecting such initiatives
- perpetuates distrust and fear rather than supporting the unity that strengthens our community. The Indiana Bill of Rights guarantees us the pursuit of happiness. However, this pursuit is hindered when we allow unfounded fears to dictate our choices. Urban Ag presents an opportunity for everyone to embrace knowledge, resilience, and community. The city of Bloomington has embraced the food charter, which emphasizes food security and urban agriculture education is a key component
- in filling that promise by fostering educational initiatives related to urban ag in residentially zoned neighborhoods. We empower ourselves and pave the way for a healthier, stronger community. This not only addresses the fears held by some regarding traffic safety and noise, but it also replaces those fears with the benefits that enhance our quality of life.
- Let us move forward together embracing this opportunity to cultivate not just gardens, but lasting connections within our community. Together, we can foster an environment that values education, sustainability, resilience, and the well-being of all residents, not just the few who complain about potential change. Thank you for your attention, and please vote yes on this for the future of all Bloomington residents. With that being said, we prefer the original calculation on the max number of employees and students that Eric presented last month.
- Three employees and eight students is nowhere near what will serve the community best. And then as Commissioner Burrell stated earlier, the UDO and the comprehensive plan go hand in hand. The UDO has not been hand in hand with the comprehensive plan when it comes to urban ag education. And this is your opportunity to actually make that happen and move that forward. Thank you very much for your time and for what you do. Thank you.
- Is there any additional public comment. Sorry ma'am. You've already had your chance. You've already had your chance to speak tonight. We don't allow that ma'am I'm sorry. She's welcome to make her own comments if she can join online or here in the chambers.
- If there is anybody online that would like to speak speak please use the raise hand function and we can recognize you. I'm not seeing anybody else online. All right. Anyone else here in the chambers that would like to make comment. Last call. All right.
- That concludes public comment. We are back to the commission. Let me just start by pointing out that it is nearing nine o'clock and by our rules if we do not conclude action on this by nine thirty then we have to come back here for a special meeting within one week of this meeting. So I think if we're expeditious here we can get this wrapped up in the next 30 minutes. But I just ask that everybody be mindful of the clock as we as we do that.
- So we'll go now to any additional questions that came up as part of this discussion or comments or emotion. But we'll start down here at the right again. Commissioner Enright Randolph go ahead. I have a few things you mentioned comments I'll be very judicious with this and try to get through them real quick. First I just want to kind of generally speak with some of the public comment.
- I'm leaning in towards the support of this, but when people come and speak to us and they have concerns and they may generally just not like what is being proposed, we have to be considerate of that. And, you know, saying those are fears and worries, I think, takes away from the ability to have an honest dialogue and respect each other's opinion and spaces. So even though I'm in support of this,
- I just generally didn't like some of the comments that I heard at the podium today. Real quick, I actually got my PDF flagged up for that. I agree calling it a commercial, urban commercial kind of brings a negative condensation to the whole thing.
- I think there's a better way of wording that. I think that would kind of create some concerns with neighbors thinking it's just going to be like a huge commercial type use versus an accessory use. So like I said, I'll be really quick. This is a question. Having processed food sold isn't permitted, but it doesn't
- prevent them from processing food and then selling it elsewhere. Right. Absolutely. They can sell it anywhere just not on the side. So we're just taking away the option of making this more financially sound and feasible. So well I mean I'll just clarify like we didn't. So that language was verbatim was already in there now for the urban agriculture non-commercial. So we just didn't change it. We left that as is. I personally would
- think that there's no issue with them selling limited processed food on there if they can already do that. Also, to the commercial and non-commercial use, they could pretty much operate as is. It's just that sale and that educational component that wouldn't be permitted. Is that correct?
- Well I don't I don't want to speak out of specific property. We're discussing legislation right now for the city as a whole. Sorry. Thank you. I meant just generally like that's the one of the key differences and I guess President Whistler Whistler Whistler went into that. So I'll skip that question. Just I highlighted it. So sorry about that. I do agree that we need to understand maybe like
- the stormwater comments on this. They will be compost and other things. So I do think like a stormwater prevention plan or something like that, if it was recommended by CBU and stormwater could be very beneficial. Also structures in a floodway need to be discussed. I also don't really understand the eight student
- limitation I think that puts some practical difficulties if we actually want to see this thrive outside of just growing kind of the greenery and everything like if we actually want this to be an educational kind of resource limiting it to eight people is is quite strict and
- Yeah, that's pretty much it. The last thing I highlighted is just other accessory uses under some of these zones. A daycare center, adult, child. This is something I always like to bring up is like, we're looking at one thing, but what is already allowed could potentially kind of bring the same
- concerns forward, but they're already allowed to do it with, you know, other accessory uses. Orchard or tree farm commercial, that's actually permitted in R1, and it's an accessory use kind of through the other zones. So it's like, it kind of brings pause that, you know, we wouldn't be addressing this and potentially allowing it, and they're allowing it
- additional accessory, and Eric, I have one more question because I talked about if this is applied for, it'll go through a conditional accessory use, which will be the BZA, and that's not just, they're gonna be talking about a number of different things, like the changing of the character, the increase of traffic, and other safety concerns, and then they can formulate their own finding of facts, and they could potentially approve
- Or or not approved based off of some of that criteria, correct? Yes, certainly the board can take some of that into account as they review each situation Okay, and I'm sorry for taking up so much space you guys had a discussion on my birthday So I wasn't here on the last plan commission But I did want to provide some comments. So, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Smith
- Urban farmer build structures in the public right away. What's our recourse to remove them. So the engineering department unless they grant an encroachment they have to somebody would have to remove a private property encroachment into the right away. Okay. Do we actually actively do enforcement. Yes like this. Yes. Okay. Parking is there a parking requirement if there's a farm stop.
- For a farm farm stop is not a store on this site. There's going to be a store right. Yeah. So there's not a. So this use is not a use in and of itself that has a minimum. So a single family dwelling unit does not have a minimum parking requirement. There's no parking requirement for a farm stop on an urban farm for a farm store. Correct. There is not a minimum for urban agriculture non-commercial or single family dwelling in or urban agriculture commercial use. Okay.
- You talk about 10 foot setbacks for structures. What about everything else related to this like beehives and compost piles of beehives do not have a setback that we are not. Those are not regulated compost piles have a maximum height but I don't think that there is a setback for those. No there's not a setback for those. What about floodways DNR regulates floodways.
- Correct. So DNR regulates floodways as well as we have regulations. So if somebody is doing work within the floodplain they need a floodplain development permit as well as any other applicable state or federal permits. Well okay so let's clarify what work is in my understanding any modification to grade or grading in a floodway is illegal unless you have a permit. Is that still the case. Yes you need a permit. It may or may not be legal but somebody has to review it and make that determination. Right.
- So those are enforcement issues for any urban farm. They've got to be out of the flood. Those are issues for any property in the city. Okay. And structures I know in the county there's a limit on number of structures can have on a property. Do we have any limit on number. And I say struggling barn physical built a greenhouse. I wouldn't say that has to do with a temporary one. But do we have any number of structure restrictions in the city. So the only number of structures would be enclosed accessory structures.
- So the U.D.O. right now says to. So this language has allowance for greenhouses to exceed that. Okay. So they have to have their house to get up to like a farm store and is a chicken coop count for that. I have not had to draw a line for the chicken coop but I would say yes. Just curiosity. I mean it's an enclosed accessory structure so I don't see how it would not. So the contradiction today is we have a
- a proposal before us that's from the city but we also have an unofficially petitioner this reason why we have a bunch of people sitting in the stands and that's my that's why I'm trying to segregate these discussions. And I want to say the people sitting here the proposal I have a problem with that. We've needed urban farming for a long time. The reason I'm bringing up enforcement is I'm trying to help you out. So I would just make sure the city whatever we do is make sure we follow our rules and we should be good to go. I'm done.
- So I'll start off urban agriculture is allowed everywhere in the city right fully. Every district urban agriculture is allowed and this change is about retail. It's about retail and then education is the other is the other aspect that it really changed. It also expands the size a little bit but really it's about the retail. That's the main thing you mentioned that there are some other
- uses that are commercial like the orchard. Those are not retail sites. Yes you can grow trees to do that but it's not an open retail use. That's still not allowed there. So for me that's the kicker. Allowing a store in a residential no go. This type of thing is like a one way ratchet. We've already heard people say well wait if they can have three employees for their farm why can't other home occupations have three employees because these types of changes are presidential. People look at them and say wait why can't I do that.
- And then they come in and they ask for it too. And these things like it's a one way ratchet and the residential goes away. Right. It becomes people it becomes denser it becomes retail all those things. Maybe that's not bad. There may be people who say well so what. There was one of the commenters who said move someplace else. If you don't want to be here move someplace where there are covenants don't live there.
- That's not my answer. I think Bloomington should have a diversity of different types of lifestyles and places where you can live and single family residential is legitimate. People should be allowed to have single family residential if that's where it's not a guarantee or a promise or an oath by the city that nothing will ever change anywhere. But I think it's not unreasonable to rely on that and have an expectation that you're not going to allow retail into residential. So.
- For me that that's the main kicker the education part of this and the I mean be honest like there's one petitioner here. There's someone who really is interested in this. It's a citywide change but the people who came up and spoke in favor didn't really mention the commercial aspect of it. Maybe the educational aspect of it is something that I could get behind and accept. Maybe if this were eliminate all the commercial aspects of this and say look this is urban agriculture.
- And some other some other education right. Something like that and then allow that specific type of use with the already existing non commercial urban agriculture. That's something that I think would eliminate about 98 percent of all the disagreement in the room.
- Very very quickly other small things some of the commenters mentioned things like some of the structures may not be covered by the setback just because of the wording I think that's very interesting comment. I don't know enough to say yes or no about that. But that's something we should look at produce versus food products those types of things. It's like getting the wording of these things right. I don't know. I'm just reiterating some of the interesting comments that people said they're like maybe we should look at that. So that's enough for me. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Kinsey.
- in support of expanding urban agriculture in the ways that we can in urban education around agriculture. And I do agree with the commenters who raised some legitimacy to the comprehensive plan being very supportive of expanding urban farming. I too share the concern about the commercial aspect and I
- I'm really enthused by the information that Jamie Scholl produced about what the city of Bloomington Commission on Sustainability is considering for terminology clarification. And to me there's some real potential here for better specifying this work. So I'm most encouraged by what I saw in this
- Recommended definitions to really clarify what it is that we're trying to talk about and I'm impressed with the amount of notation and the variety of terms that can be used and you know, I'm I'm presuming that the that the planned Commission staff have not really seen this because it's it seems very new and it seems to be you know prompted perhaps by some of this conversation so
- I feel like I really would like to wait to see where this goes from the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability to see what they could do to improve on this, to make it much more about expanding food and agriculture options and to not... I feel like the commercial part of it really has detracted from what I think this could be.
- in some ways want to ask the staff if they had much of this information or if any of this information would change what you're proposing if that gives you pause at all. I think there's some interesting terminology in here for urban homestead. That is quite interesting. So to me that would make it much more viable as meeting the comprehensive plan goals and statement.
- And I do have a couple of other concerns, given the really astute comments by Jesse Gilmour's knowledge of some of the real intricacies of policy. I don't know the aquaponics and aquaculture. That does seem to need to be clarified. I doubt, as he indicated, that we would get a lot of fish use or fish aquaponics if this
- proposal were to go forward but I do think if we can correct it and make it right we should do that. I am also persuaded by a little bit of the concern about trying to move more of the educational components that are of interest into a noncommercial
- use. I think that would be another way to address some of the educational interests. To me, though, that's different than the food and agriculture interests that's expressed in the comprehensive plan. So to me, there are lots of things in this proposal that we're trying to do, and I'm most persuaded by expanding our understanding of urban farmsteading.
- So that's where I am right now. I do think we need to clarify though the produce versus products. If that's a conflict, if that is indeed in conflict, we need to find that and fix it. That's where I am. Thank you. We've got 20 minutes remaining. We've been averaging a little over five minutes per comment. So we got to pick up the pace if we're going to get this done. Please go ahead. I'll be very quick.
- What I what concerns me here is we're talking about community. So if we're going to live well and in harmony and I haven't heard harmony from the neighbors of a specific place and we so we have a specifically a specific case that's happening in front of us that we already know it's not working for the city or for the residents around the property.
- So I think we need to really put some thought into this because, you know, how are we going to enforce this? How are we going to enforce? How do we make? I don't think people inherently are upset because somebody is farming in their backyard. I think there are issues that are beyond of what went beyond of a garden or a place where they are cultivating beautiful plants and bees or whatever it is that they are cultivating.
- The problem that we are seeing here is it's it's a commercial entity inside of a zone zone place that it's a resident it's a rest zone residential. So so that's where the issues come. I'm sure with traffic traffic is not is the least of the problem. I am sure there are many other problems that go with noise water. I mean.
- stormwater and everything else. So I think we need to pause and think about this. It's not just oh yeah it's commercial and now we we put three employees eight students and we limit the size that they can do this and 10 feet. Yes we can do all that but it's still going to is it still going to be harmonious in the neighborhood where this is going to exist. That's where I I would like to focus on.
- I think I'm going to say anything anyone has not said before. Thank you. Any other comments about bullet points. Educational urban farmstead is much more palatable to me and encompasses a lot more of how this aligns with things within the city. Quick context that I think is really important with this. This came a case came to BZA a year ago. We sat there for two hours and discussed and debated and got nowhere and we made a point of saying to make the change necessary. You have to go to the city council.
- That happens went to the city council and then it came back to us to go back to the BZA. So I think what started and what gets highlighted here as one family one group of people are in particular is very off base. I very much see this as a movement. I think things like the environmental commission blue zone cities comprehensive plans food charter commission commission on sustainability. Those are just names that came out tonight.
- If we're going to uphold these things and say we promote them as a city then this is taking action. This is doing that food scarcity food resilience food sovereignty. I think the B.C.A. is the safeguard in this again. I've been on there for four years as well. I think that's a very important safeguard to appeal to some of the concerns you have which are valid.
- I would change the name. I like education urban farmstead and I would change the number allowed back to the size of the acreage. And one last point I think somebody made that our job here our role is not to appease one person or one family. Our job is also not to appease a group of people who have a lot of valid concerns. Our job is to look at the city as a whole. What is in line with the goals of the city and all of its community members. And I very much feel like this has a ton of support.
- behind it that should come to action and fruition in some way. So that's all I've got. Thank you. Mr. Seymour I don't know where to go. But my main question maybe is to the commission and our next steps. We all have opinions we've heard a lot of opinions. I think there's a lot of detailed nuance in questions and comments about specific language in this that we're not even talking about that I think were really good questions and concerns that we need to get to.
- I don't know if our interest in is in addressing those today or if we're still interested in more talk about big picture theory with this. And so that's maybe a question that I don't know where to go. That's all I have. Thank you. Well I think where we got to go next is a motion. And I think the nature of that motion depends on whether or not we think we're good to go and forward this on whether that's
- positive or negative or if we want to try to make our own changes to this. So just like with the last one if there are commissioners who feel we need to make amendments to this then the appropriate motion would be to continue this to the next meeting and take some time and write up some amendments so we have things to consider. If you don't have a specific amendment that you want to offer here then I think the the appropriate motion would be just to go and forward this on to the council because I
- I can promise you there will be many amendments that come when it gets to council and we'll have opportunity to make more public comment and make suggestions along the way there. So I will entertain any motion at this time. Nobody wants to make one. I can make one myself clarification. We can just vote no on this amendment right.
- We don't have to forward anything. Well this is going to go to the council no matter what we do tonight. It's just a question of do we forward it with positive recommendation negative recommendation or no recommendation. I move to continue. Is there a second for the motion to continue.
- Continue it to another you want to continue this to our next to our September meeting forward it to the yeah No to the next meeting so that we can talk about amendments like I would amend it and remove all reference to commercial Okay, the motion is to continue this to our September meeting and Have additional Discussion and opportunity to amend at that point. Is there a second for that motion? I
- All right. We have a motion to second any discussion on that quickly and a lot of dialogue on chat on the zoom I think we're on. Yeah. So if if this does come back it would be great to have maybe a print off of that. I mean there's been extreme dialogue on here. I don't know if that's possible but staff if if you could do that just that would be great.
- All right the motion is to continue any other comments before we call the roll on that motion. I am I really want to make sure that we actually think we can enact some positive changes to this proposal. I'm getting the sense that there is some momentum towards creating
- a better more favorable condition around food and agriculture needs expansion in our urban area. I'm very concerned that moving at one more meeting we're going to repeat a lot of the same thing and I'm just worried that we may not get to a point
- where we can create we can actually craft something better. And I don't mean that as a statement on staff or anything or our own capacity. But there's just a lot of difference of opinion and we could spend a lot of time listening to some of the same arguments. So I'm as I said I'm though more persuaded by what I think I'm seeing from the Commission on Sustainability as another unit of this
- a system of governance that could help us craft something. So yes so I'm not hopeful that we can do something by next meeting but I will support this continuance. I tend to agree that I think we are going to if we continue this to another meeting I haven't heard any real specific
- amendments planned here I think we may end up just repeating what we did tonight. And again there is opportunity to have this amendment once gets once it gets to council. I want to make sure that in the event this motion does not carry that we have time for another one. So I'm going to shut up now. Is there any other comment before we call the roll on this motion. All right let's call the roll on the motion to continue to the September meeting.
- Seymour. Yes. Co Brodke. No. Holmes. Yes. Kenzie. No. Smith. Yes. Whistler. No. Ballard. No. Burrell. Yes. Believe that was five yeses and four noes.
- Or four or four. There's only eight of us here. Well that means that motion fails right because we have to have five for any thing to carry. All right. So we are back where we started. Recommendation to forward to the council no recommendation. You can. Is there a second for that motion. The motion is to forward to the common council with no recommendation.
- Is there a second. All right. That fails due to lack of second. We're running out of options here. How about I move that we forward to the council with a positive recommendation. All right. Is there any final discussion before we vote on that motion. Commissioner Seaborg.
- I'm recording this maybe a couple very quick ideas for friendly amendments would be in 6 B 2 it talks about site drainage maintenance shall prevent irrigation water instead of just water from draining on adjacent properties in B 5 it talks about the maximum number of employees or volunteers. I'm assuming that means at any given time beyond a resident
- And maybe that could be clarified. Yes that's correct. At one time. OK. I'm trying to go really quick. Those were very two that jumped off the page that I thought would throw out there. Yeah I'm not sure what to do to do with that. If you're.
- I didn't even I didn't even catch all of that. Did you did you catch that. Eric Yes. So it sounds like your recommendation or your motion is for this with a positive recommendation with the proposed condition of approval that irrigation be the wording of irrigation be from the crops and that the number of employees per is per at one moment at one time in addition to residents of the property. Yes.
- OK so so you've got that. I'm willing to accept that as a friendly amendment to my motion if whoever seconded it would as well. All right. Everybody understand what we just did there. All right. Any final comments before we call the roll on that motion. Propose an amendment for the name itself. I'm sorry can we propose an amendment to change it to
- educational urban farmstead. I think again I think that encompasses a lot more it aligns a lot more. I think that that's it's I mean it's possible. I mean I think commercial turns a lot of people off. I think it does. I think that that's something though that probably is going to take a bit more discussion. I mean I would suggest maybe we just pass along that as a comment to the council that we'd like to see that amended. I'll add that to.
- We're adding to what we want to see. I think I think changing the title of the entire petition is a little bit beyond a friendly amendment at this point. I mean we laugh. That's the democratic process. I mean how do you like. That's how I'm just saying if you want to make additional amendments then no no I'll strike that. We're running out of time. I'm good.
- If I think that's something that is worthy of discussion but I think I think we already the motion to continue has already has already failed. And so I just think that's more than just a friendly amendment. I mean we're not talking about just sure. So I guess it was there a second for Mr. Seaborg's motion. I said I would accept that as a friendly amendment to my motion.
- So the motion that I made to forward is now to forward to the council with a positive recommendation with the changes suggested by Commissioner Seymour and that was seconded as well. So that's the motion that is that is on the on the table at this time. All right. Any final comments. Everybody got it. OK let's call the roll on the motion to forward.
- with the friendly amendments and a positive recommendation. Yes. Holmes. No. Kinsey. Yes. Smith. Whistler. Yes. Ballard. Yes. Burrell. No. Seymour. Yes.
- Sorry I lost count there was that that was we got five there. OK thank you. All right. Motion carries. Thank you all for your patience and your diligence here tonight and bearing with us in a tricky process. And again there will be more discussion at the city council level and hope hope this conversation continues. That is our final petition for the night. So we are adjourned. Thank you.