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player ready...Paradise Community Homes received the zoning change it needed from the Valparaiso City Council Monday night to move forward with a development that includes 18 “attainable” single-family homes on the city’s north side after pledging $17,500 to the Valparaiso YMCA toward building a fence between the future neighbors.
With a vote of 5 to 1, the 4.79 acres at the southeast corner of Cumberland Drive and Bullseye Lake Road were granted a zoning amendment from Business Park (BP) to Urban Residential (UR).
Councilman Peter Anderson, R-5th, recused himself from the vote as he is a member of the Valparaiso YMCA Board of Directors. Council Member Emilie Hunt, D-At-large, was the dissenting vote.
For the second consecutive council meeting, the tone got heated, this time because Hunt questioned whether there was a conflict of interest regarding Paradise President and CEO Bill Oeding’s recent involvement in the granting of $500,000 from the Local Income Tax (LIT) budget to Paradise Homes when he served as city administrator and consultant to Mayor Jon Costas on the doling out of those funds.
Oeding resigned as city administrator just five days before the Plan Commission held a public hearing on the rezoning request May 5.
“I would like to know if there was a conflict of interest in the funding of this non-profit,” Hunt said.
Costas took umbrage with the question.
“To call it a conflict, I think, is an affront to what he is doing,” he replied, reiterating statements he made at the last meeting that the LIT budget is made at the mayor’s pleasure and that Oeding does not draw a salary for his role with Paradise. “At the same time, we have met the letter of the law,” Costas added.
Council Member Robert Cotton, D-2nd, said he found Hunt’s line of questioning to be reasonable.
Oeding, who had already sparred with Hunt at the last meeting over his opinion that Paradise should not be responsible for financing a fence for the Y, said, “If you’re accusing me of something, I wish you’d just say it,” adding that he has put his own money into the Paradise coffers when necessary.
Hunt said that the $500,000 grant to Paradise is five times more than any other non-profit has received from the city, to which Costas rejoined, “Attainable housing is a laudable goal.”
At Cotton’s pressing, however, Oeding confirmed that there will be no income requirement to purchase one of the “attainable” homes that are planned to sell at cost, which Paradise hopes to keep in the $250,000 to $300,000 range.
“There’s no preference for the people these were supposed to be for,” Cotton said, pointing out that a firefighter or other first responder could lose out to someone wealthier.
Oeding repeated his explanation that federal grants would be needed to facilitate such income restrictions, and his non-profit organization is not pursuing those at this time. “Under 120 (percent) AMI (area median income), people can’t get bank loans,” he said.
Costas conceded that, on the advice of counsel, “we have to improve the budgeting process” and explained after the meeting that the LIT budget will be part of the 2027 formal budgeting process, which begins soon.
He said new City Administrator Steve Poulos “wants to have a more robust process.”
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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