- Okay, we'll call to order the meeting of the Elseville Plan Commission for Thursday, October 2nd, 2025.
- Steve, would you listen to the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
- of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty
- and justice for all. Okay, Renee, roll call, please.
- Here. Here. Here. Okay. The next time agenda on our agenda is approval of the minutes for the August
- 7th meeting. Motion to approve. So I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed.
- Motion carries.
- We have no old business. We have a monthly conflict of interest statement. Does anyone have a conflict
- of interest on our items on the agenda tonight? Seeing none, our first item of new business is the voluntary
- annexation of 5711 North Union Valley Road. Three parcels totaling 71.93 acres. The petitioners are
- Michael and Megan Ripley. Case number PC25-25.
- Denise. Good evening. Before you, this petition by Michael Megan Ripley to voluntarily annex three parcels
- totaling approximately 71.93 acres of land. Subject parcels are located at 5711 North Union Valley Road,
- 4601 West McNeely Street, and 4.10 acres. Parcel number 53-04-11-100.
- dash 010.000 dash 011 and upon annexation we will assign an address to that parcel. This is a super
- voluntary annexation and contiguity of the parcels are as follows. 5711 North Union Valley Road is 20
- percent contiguous. The 4.10 acres is 49 percent contiguous and
- 4601 West McNeely Street is 34% contiguous to the town of Eltsville, and 100% of the property owners
- are parties to the petition. The properties are currently zoned Agricultural Residential, AGR, by Monroe
- County, and are recommended to be designated as Agricultural AG upon annexation. Properties will be
- located in Council Ward 3,
- The plan commission's action shall be in the form of a favorable, unfavorable, or no recommendation
- town council which takes final action on the annexation petition. Staff recommends a favorable recommendation
- be afforded to town council with a recommended zoning of agricultural AG for all three parcels upon
- annexation and petitioners are present if you have any questions.
- Does anyone from the Planning Commission have any questions for Denise? Seeing none, does the petitioner
- want to say anything? Okay. So let me just say something. So on this screen is the order of the parcels
- to be annexed. The largest parcel come in first, smallest, which is the 4.10 acres second, and the other
- parcel will be third.
- And this is the zoning, surrounding zoning for the town. That's all. Okay. Before we open this up for
- public comment, just let me make sure that everyone understands if anyone is wanting to comment about
- this. Right now, this is just an annexation of the property into the town limits. It's going to have
- the same zoning in the town that it had previously in the county.
- We do not know at this point if there are any future plans for the owners of this property to do anything
- with it. But once they have future plans, if they have any, they will have to come back to the plan
- commission and then the town council to have the property rezoned if they wish to use it for a different
- use. So all we're doing right now is annexing this into the town limits and that's it.
- Is there anyone from the public who wants to comment on this petition? If so, you have three minutes.
- Come on up and tell us your name and sign in.
- My name is Jim Perry. I just have a question. Maybe Denise can address it, but you said it's agricultural
- residential county, but then you said if it comes into this town, it would be agricultural. Is there
- a difference? It's just the county calls their agricultural residential AGR, and we just call it agricultural.
- So what does that mean, though, in terms of the zoning? Because obviously residential is in the county,
- but it doesn't say residential in the town. It said agricultural. So is it agricultural land solely,
- or is there a prospect for some mix? It's zoned agricultural, which includes residential. We just don't
- call it agricultural residential.
- But as you say, there would have to be a proposal for the use of the property. For other than agricultural
- in our zone. So if there were a proposal that came forward for residential, that would be sustained
- for that. So if somebody say purchased it or if the petitioners decided to change the zoning,
- They would have to petition the plan commission for a recommendation to town council and then town council
- would be the final authority on any rezone. Yeah, but if it permits residential, then there would be
- no need for rezoning if somebody came forward with a residential proposal. How much residential does
- the county allow in agricultural residential? Well, in Ellis, I don't know about the county, but in
- Ellisville, it's a minimum of two acres to be
- two acre parcels to be considered residential. And that means what? I mean, for residents to be residential,
- be allowed in agricultural. In other words, they would have to have two acre lots if they wanted to
- make it residential in an agricultural zone. Each lot would have to be two acres. Minimum. Minimum.
- Correct. I just wanted a clarification on that.
- Okay, okay. Do we have do we have any process for evaluating the consequences of even a voluntary?
- Annexation. Well, we say let's say we were to annex something that would cost the town commit the town
- to $1,000,000 a year public expenses. Yes, that's all figured out be undesirable. That's all figured
- out beforehand and that's part of.
- So that's part of the process? It is part of the process, yes. To figure out how much. And do we have
- that analysis? Yes, we do a fiscal plan. A fiscal plan? Yes. Time's up. Okay. It's all written down
- in the document set. If you don't have a copy of it, she can get you one. These documents? I can't see
- what you've got there. I have what was sent to the homeowner. Well, no, it's on the town's website.
- It's the fiscal plan.
- that's on the town's website. So we'd have to go to the town website to understand the public costs
- or benefits. Yes. What's the net? I don't believe there is any additional cost at this point in time.
- Our fiscal plan covers if there's any increase on taxes, which is minute because he's bringing
- in agricultural and there's not a tax increase when you bring in agricultural.
- there is an assessment and the assessment will shift from the county to their town? Yes, but I mean
- it's very minute. That's a positive. It is, but it's very minor because it's of the zoning. But it also
- doesn't cost us anything at this point. And where on the town website is that listed? It's on the home
- page at the bottom for recent news. Okay, good. Thank you. Name is down here.
- Do you need anything else? No, that's it. Thank you. Was there anybody else? Come on up. My name is
- Richard Dillon. I just have two or three questions. D-I-L-L-M-A-N.
- Who's gonna take care of the McNeely Street from this point on if it's accepted? So when we annex properties
- into town, we also annex the streets. Will McNeely Street be annexed? It'll come into the town inventory,
- yes, that portion. The whole street? That portion, just the portion that's annexed. Only the portions
- that are adjacent to the property being annexed. Okay, and the road is, the road, so in other words,
- Everybody that lives across McNeely Street that borders this annexation are now bordering the city limits,
- if this is accepted, is that correct? Yes. Yes, the town limits. Okay. Does the town have any future
- plans on annexing all of your open spots? If you look at GIS now, you guys have got a lot of... We do,
- but the state has made it virtually impossible to
- involuntarily annex areas, so we can only take voluntary annexations. I mean, it's possible, but it's
- extremely difficult. Okay, and that's just a question. The other question I had, I've always wanted
- to ask this. What's the tax difference? If you're annexed into the city of Ellipsville, how much more
- do you have to pay for taxes?
- I don't know. That's a hard one to calculate. I know, but isn't there a benchmark of like maybe three
- cents, 30 cents a thousand or something like that on assessment? No. On the paper it says the effective
- annexation of the estimated tax rate increases from .5673 to .5645 for 2526. That's a number nobody
- probably knows.
- And the only other question I had is if let's say Mr. Ripley or someone else comes before the town council
- to ask for a rezone, you would then have to notify all the people like you did this time. That's all
- I know. I understand exactly why he's doing it because I've tried to deal with the county too. Okay,
- anybody else?
- so you may have already answered. I have a couple of simple questions. Our land borders the...
- Excuse me, sir. Can you say your name? Jim Callie. Callie? Jim Callie, C-A-L-L-I, 5745 Union Valley
- Road. We've been there about 25 years. And our property, in a small part, borders on that northeast,
- that most northeast section. So the question I have is, with annexation,
- How does the zoning laws change? It's currently 2.5 acres. It's currently 2.5. Do you need to stand
- back a little bit from it? It's currently 2.5. It's currently 2.5 acres out there and it's been that
- way for a while. So what changes if that is annexed? What changes in that? It doesn't really change
- much of anything currently. The county has it zoned as agricultural and we are zoning it as agricultural.
- Okay, so even if that's annex, it's still zoned agricultural? Yes. And how would that, so then there
- wouldn't automatically be sewers, plumbing, et cetera, out there. It would stay as it is now. So how
- would that, then how would someone subsequently be able to change that to rural? Would they have to
- come back through the same process? They have to come back for another, for a rezoning, which comes back to,
- Okay, so currently if this passes through, it'll still be 2.5 acres for a dwelling unit. Two under our
- code. Two? Two under our code. Yeah. Okay, so it'll still be two acres for that, okay. That was my question,
- thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Okay, seeing none, I will make a motion that we forward case number PC
- 25-25 to the town council with a favorable recommendation. Second. Pick one. Okay, we have a motion
- and a second. Renee, roll call, please. David Drake. Yes. Dan Swoffer. Yes. Steve Hale. Yes.
- Kamala Samples. Yes. Pat Wesolowski. Yes. Okay, motion carries. Thank you.
- The next item on our agenda is resolution 03-2025, a resolution of the Ellsville Plan Commission approving
- a declaratory resolution of the Ellsville Redevelopment Commission to amend the Ellsville Riverfront
- Economic Development District. This is case number 2025-24. The board will recall that last year it
- was established a redevelopment commission and a board. And in December, the redevelopment commission
- passed two resolutions to establish two economic development areas in the town. One is the riverfront,
- one's the west side. You will also recall that under the Indiana code, once the redevelopment commission
- passes a resolution to establish an economic development area, the code requires it to come before the
- plan commission for your consideration, then it goes to council, and then it finally comes back to the
- redevelopment commission for a public hearing and for confirmation of that
- resolution to establish economic development districts. So in December of last year, the RDC passed
- two resolutions. They came before the Plan Commission, Town Council. In February, the Redevelopment
- Commission confirmed their resolution. When it went to the auditor's office, when I say the resolution,
- that includes plat maps showing the parcels.
- to be included in the economic development districts and the legal descriptions. The auditor found some
- inconsistencies. There were over 100 parcels in the Riverfront district and the auditor found
- some inconsistencies. By that I mean she found that there were some parcels that were described in the
- legal description but were not included on the plat map and vice versa.
- properties on the plat map that weren't included in the legal. So we circled back around to Bynum-Fanio.
- They corrected that. And under the Indiana Code, we have to start all over again in order to amend the
- Riverfront District. So in August, the Redevelopment Commission passed a resolution to amend the downtown
- or the Riverfront District.
- This is step two. It now comes before you for your review and hopefully approval. If you approve it,
- it goes to the plan commission and then it should come back to the RDC in November. This is just on
- the downtown or the riverfront district. The west side economic development area is not going to be
- changed. And the fact that there were discrepancies did not prevent an economic development district
- from being
- established for either the downtown or the west side area. If you go to Elevate and you start looking
- at properties in Ellisville, you can see there's been established the west side economic development
- area and the riverfront. We're just clarifying these few parcels here to make sure they get included
- as well. Okay. Does anybody have any questions for Darla?
- Okay, like where it says Park Street. The long thing sticking out. Okay. Okay, so how far does that
- go? Like what's this at the end here? Like we're, Park Street's down by the ballpark. Right. Okay,
- so what, like see how it angles out, you know, goes down, then kind of, what is that down there? That
- includes the Township Trustee's office.
- Okay, so that's as far as it goes basically that time? Yes, in that direction. And it looks funny because
- they can't, when you take the map and you kind of flatten it out, it looks odd like that. That's, whole
- area there is the Township Trustees Office. Okay, so it don't go really no further than that? No, I
- mean it has to be still within the limits of the town. Okay.
- Good question. I don't know exactly where the ball fields are, so I don't know. Well, they're in between
- the trustees office. It doesn't go as far as on that. No, OK, that's that's what I'm wanting to know.
- You answered it right there. I asked if it went as far as we're on that where I live. OK, any more questions?
- Could they come in and, I say they, anybody or the town come in and wipe the houses out, put commercial
- in? Well, the Redevelopment Commission has pretty broad powers under the statutes, so they
- could theoretically work with a commercial developer to put in commercial properties. And they could
- give them grants or something along those lines to encourage the development.
- It don't sound very good. Well, I don't think that's in the works anytime soon, but. Well, yeah, but
- we don't know. You don't? Is there something we can put in there that they can't do that? I think. They
- can't take housing out? Well, can I ask Darla something real quick?
- So when we came up with the TIF districts, we had to create a list of items that we would spend money
- on. And what you just asked wasn't one of those things. Correct. So if they wanted to, meaning RDC wanted
- to change the economic development plan, that's one of those things that they would have to start all
- over again. The economic plan right now is just to do basic, what I call maintenance types of things,
- sidewalks,
- sewers, installation of utilities, parks, that kind of thing. There's no plan yet to do any major commercial
- development or work with developers to get commercial developments in there. So they don't have to come
- back to the other commissioners and to us? Correct. And then to the town council? Correct. If they wanted
- to amend the development plan, they would have to do that. This plan
- that goes with this proposal is the same as it was in the other proposal. Okay. Anybody else? Is there
- any public comment? Seeing none, I will make a motion that we approve resolution or adopt resolution
- 03-2025 PC under case number
- 2025-24. Second. Yeah, we have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. David Drake. Yes. Dan Swaffer.
- Yes. Steve Hale. Yes. Pamela Samples. Yes. And Pat Wasielowski. No. Okay. Does that mean it doesn't pass?
- No, there was four in favor, correct? Yes. Oh, okay. Four's your quorum. My math is not... Four's your...
- Well, I confused him earlier. Yeah. Okay, planning department update. Next meeting, let's try there,
- is November 6th and you will have new business. Prior to the floor, is there anyone in the audience
- that wants to address us on something that wasn't in our
- Agenda. Seeing none, are there any planning commission comments? Seeing none, we're adjourned.