Valpo Council Votes To Raise Permit Fees

The Monday night, November 9th Valparaiso City Council meeting went for just under an hour and a half. There were two ordinances and one item of other business. After the Pledge of Allegiance Mayor Jon Costas, speaking for all council members, congratulated Councilwoman Barbara Domer on her election to be the new Clerk of the Porter County courts. Domer will serve as a Valpo councilmember for district 3 until January. The Democrat committeemen will hold a caucus before then to appoint someone to replace her.

Both ordinances on the agenda for the evening dealt with the new Indiana legislation House Enrolled Act 1001. Ordinance No. 25, 2026 establishes a building and construction fund and was up for second reading and final vote. The new law requires municipalities to create a separate fund for all building, permit, plan review, and zoning fees to go into. The cost to perform these services will also come out of the same fund. This was done to mandate that local governments only charge fees in the amount necessary to cover expenses for those services. This was to stop some municipalities from supplementing their general fund with excessive permit fees. Valparaiso, however, does the opposite and supplements expenses incurred from the permitting process with the general fund to the tune of nearly a million dollars a year, which leads us to the next ordinance. Ordinance 25 passed unanimously.

Ordinance No. 26, 2026 amends Valparaiso’s building permit fee schedule. HEA 1001 caused Valpo to realize how out of balance its permit fees and costs incurred from issuing them were. This ordinance was up for second reading and final vote and was discussed for nearly an hour by council. The discussion mainly focussed on any possible impact to planned affordable housing projects around Valparaiso. When you consider a 30 year mortgage though, the raised

fees of around 500 extra dollars for a house under 300,000$ would not prevent someone from buying. What raising the fees does is allow the rate of the fees to cover the cost to the city for inspections, subdivision plats, and engineering work incurred by the permits. This will free up about 900,000 dollars in the general fund that had been supplementing these costs to be used elsewhere in the city. Ordinance 26 passed with Councilman Robert Cotton being the sole no

vote.

Under other business was a short discussion of Valparaiso Community school’s use of the opioid reimbursement grant. The grant was used to supply drug tests and educational videos. Due to changing vendors for the educational material and purchasing them at a lower cost they had about 2,400$ leftover. The leftover funds will be used to purchase opioid goggles. Opioid goggles are a specialized simulation tool designed to visually and physically mimic the effects of opioid impairment.

Some notes from council liaison reports. Valpo Community Schools has seen three straight years of decreased enrollment, being now the lowest in the last ten years. This has led to a loss of around 350,000$ of state funding. There was also a contract tabled that would train teachers on how to use AI in the classroom. It was tabled due to issues with contract structure. The Park Board meeting will be moving to City Hall. At the last Environment Advisory Board meeting there was a presentation on microplastics by two VU professors, this meeting is available on the city’s website for anyone interested in watching. Microplastics are now found in virtually everyone’s brain. Condemnation proceedings were approved at the Board of Works for the Red Carpet Smoke Shop (head shop) to make way for the new Campbell and Lincoln Way roundabout. There were no public comments.

The next Valparaiso City council meeting will be November 23rd at 6:00pm.

Valpo Council Votes To Raise Permit Fees

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