Valpo council member seeks report

A Valparaiso City Council member has filed a complaint with the state’s public access counselor over the preliminary results of a long-delayed housing study, while city officials say the early findings are not public record and the full report will be released to the public in the coming weeks.

“I deserve to be the eyes and input based on the raw data,” said Robert Cotton, D-2nd.

According to documents provided by Cotton that were filed with Luke Britt, the state’s public access counselor, Cotton requested preliminary findings from the housing study from Patrick Lyp, the city attorney, on Dec. 7.

Cotton followed up on Dec. 23 and 24 and Lyp, who was out of the office for the holidays, responded on Dec. 24, noting that Urban Planners is in the process of preparing the housing study and Beth Shrader, the city planner, is the firm’s primary contact.

“As Beth and I have shared with you, the Housing Study is not complete. That said, as confirmed by Mayor (Matt) Murphy and others, once the Housing Study is complete it will be shared publicly,” Lyp wrote to Cotton.

Lyp also noted that while Urban Planners provided Shrader with preliminary material from the study, that material falls under the category of documents a municipality may withhold under state code.

Cotton responded that he strongly disagreed with Lyp’s “stunning lack of regard for my standing as an elected government official of the same agency” and added though it wasn’t his preference to initiate an official complaint, “for the sake of good governance, I am fully prepared to proceed.”

Cotton filed the bulk of his complaint with the state on Christmas Eve, following with an additional document on Monday.

Cotton is certain that in addition to Shrader, other members of the city’s executive team have seen the preliminary data from

the housing study.

“That’s my concern,” said Cotton, in his second term on the council and an advocate for affordable housing. “I’m on the same team with perhaps an opposing view of housing.”

During an October City Council meeting on the Calkins Hill development, townhomes with an average price around $600,000 situated on the edge of downtown in the 300 block of Jefferson Street, Cotton noted that the $10 million development is the most recent in a handful of downtown projects that are “highend housing.”

He asked then about the housing study, commissioned under former Mayor Jon Cost as, and whether the city was “pursuing things to the exclusion of more affordable things.”

Shrader said at the time that preliminary results of the study showed the Cal kins Hill project meshed with the city’s housing needs.

The city hired Urban Partners in 2018 for a fee not to exceed $56,880 to complete data collection on the city’s housing stock and report back in October 2019, Mayor Matt Murphy said in a statement, adding no further schedule was formalized.

Murphy took over as mayor on Jan. 1, 2020, along with new members of the City Council, and Shrader was named planning director the following month. A kickoff meeting for the housing study was held Feb. 12, Murphy said, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With the inevitable delays relating to the pandemic, the City of Valparaiso has not received a final report and only interim feedback,” he said, adding that the report will be shared with the city, including the City Council and community, when it’s complete and meets the standards outlined in the contract.

The housing study remains a priority, Murphy said, and will be helpful to gain an even clearer picture of the city’s housing stock and future needs.

“When the contracted report contains all of the elements we have requested, we look forward to presenting findings and answering any questions,” Murphy said, adding he hopes that will be within the next eight to 10 weeks.

Still, Cotton said he wants to make sure the city gets what it asked for from Urban Planners, one of the reasons he wants to see the raw data.

“That should be welcomed,” he said.