Around 30 people attended the Bloomington City Council’s special legislative session Wednesday, likely hoping to speak on controversial resolutions that would start a process to amend the city’s Unified Development Ordinance.
They never got that chance.
Instead, the meeting was adjourned in just under an hour — the council’s shortest session since a 10-minute one in September. After two 4-4 votes, the council failed to introduce the two resolutions for discussion or a vote (a split decision means a motion fails).
Councilmembers Matt Flaherty, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Hopi Stosberg and Kate Rosenbarger voted to introduce the resolutions; councilmembers Dave Rollo, Andy Ruff, Courtney Daily and Isak Nti Asare voted against introducing them.
“It was disappointing, considering this is just the first step in a long process,” Adam Martinez, a resident and supporter of one of the resolutions who had planned to speak, said.
Disappointment was Rosenbarger’s reaction, as well, particularly for the public and staff who took the time to come to the meeting. She sponsored the second resolution, which would ask the Plan Commission to prepare UDO amendments allowing duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes in residential zoning districts and remove certain limitations on accessory dwelling units — a smaller, detached housing unit on the same lot — among other things.
The other resolution, sponsored by Flaherty, included directives to the Plan Commission to add new sustainability incentive requirements for developers and to eliminate minimum parking requirements in all zones.
The meeting was originally scheduled to be a deliberation session, meaning no votes on resolutions. Stosberg, the council president, said she wanted to allow the vote because there are already several UDO changes in progress. Rosenbarger said she expects the resolutions to come back to the table the next time there’s a full council.
That’s because councilmember Sydney Zulich was not present Wednesday. Zulich said in a text to the Indiana Daily Student she did not attend because she was sick. She stopped short of saying how she would have voted but wrote it was not good governance to share the legislation with less than a week’s notice, despite her support for more types of affordable housing.
“I, along with several other councilmembers, was also not informed of the full scope of the legislation until Friday,” Zulich wrote. “We can’t claim to be transparent, and turn around and make decisions in this way.”
Ruff, who voted against introducing the resolutions, said he didn’t have enough time to read them, particularly for a proposal with “dramatic” changes. He said he didn’t know about them until Saturday.
“They have huge implications for the whole community, and it needs a long, lengthy, well-deliberated, well understood process, and this wasn’t the start of it in my opinion,” Ruff said.
Rosenbarger said councilmembers received the same amount of notice as any other resolution.
Both Ruff and Rosenbarger agreed, though, that this was just the beginning of a process that could take months, if not more. The vote Wednesday would not have immediately changed the UDO. Rather, it would have required at least three more meetings with public comment before being on the books, Stosberg said at the meeting. That’s in addition to any proposed amendments, additional readings or other items that would postpone the approval further.
Amending the UDO for duplexes and other multi-family units has been a contentious topic for years. In November 2019, the council passed a UDO amendment not allowing duplexes and triplexes in central city neighborhoods. That amendment was sponsored by Rollo and former councilmember Chris Sturbaum, who attended the meeting as a member of the public Wednesday.
Then in May 2021, the council allowed duplexes in central neighborhoods, subject to review by the Board of Zoning Appeals.
“Upzoning,” or allowing for more housing unit density than what’s permitted currently, has its defenders and dissidents. Martinez is a co-lead of YIMBY-ana, a local housing advocacy group. “YIMBY” stands for “Yes in my backyard,” which Martinez said is in opposition to “Not in my backyard,” or NIMBY thinking: not wanting something a person is opposed to in their own neighborhood.
“It’s basically about saying, ‘I know we need these different types of housing, I know we need walkable neighborhoods, and I want this to happen in my neighborhood, not just in some other part of town,’” Martinez said.
Martinez told the IDS before the meeting he supported the resolution because it cuts much of the red tape that prevents the types of housing the city needs — homes that can be a “jumping off point” for people transitioning out of apartments.
Sturbaum doesn’t support the resolutions. He’s written about his opposition to upzoning and opinions on housing, including in columns to The Herald-Times. He told the IDS before the meeting that the loosening of current restrictions would let companies buy up houses and convert them into unaffordable rentals. He said it’ll make parking and owning a home in the city — part of the “American dream” — harder.
The council’s next meeting is March 26.
