The Meeting Agenda?
On the 23rd of this month the Bloomington board of zoning had a meeting for taking a decision on the appeals submitted by 2 organizations regarding parking spaces in the communities. The first appeal was made by David Howard (Tabor Bruce Architects) requesting for a variance regarding the minimum number of parking spaces. They wanted to reduce the commercial space on the ground floor to rent out the space (1518 Square feet) as two ground floor dwelling units. But for this to be approved the petitioner has to provide an additional parking space. So, the petitioner was appealing to waive this requirement. The second appeal was made by Walnut Star, LLC (Studio 3 Design, Inc.) requesting for a variance for reducing the minimum number of required electric vehicle charging enabled parking stations from 5 to 2.
The handout packet can be found here. The meeting started at 5:30 PM and went on till 7:00PM (90 Mins).
Meeting Attendees?
The committee members Vice President Jo Throckmorton, Nick Farrell, Tim Ballard, Flavia Burrell headed by the president Barre Klapper. Other than them there were the petitioners, 8 people who connected through zoom and few residents as the audience.
Where the Meeting Took Place?
The meeting was conducted at the Bloomington city hall chambers room number 115. The meeting was also broadcasted over Zoom. I attended the meeting over Zoom.
Meeting Proceedings:
- The first appeal was regarding a three-story building with 9 one-bedroom studio apartments, 1500 sq. feet of ground floor commercial space and 2 parking spaces that was constructed in 2019. The property is located at the southeast corner of S Walnut Street and E Driscoll Drive. The petitioner wanted to convert the commercial space on the ground floor into 2 ground dwelling studio apartments that he can rent. But based on the regulations for this conversion the petitioner has to provide an additional parking space. So, the petitioner was requesting for variance from the minimum number of parking spaces required for conversion of the commercial space into two studio units. The petitioner says that the commercial space on the ground floor has been vacant for the past 2 years and very few people show interest in that space. And also claims that the tenants in the apartment do not use the parking spaces and only 2 of the tenants have cars and all the other tenants use public transportation for commute. But on the contrary the board’s report said that there have been multiple instances where the present tenants had parked in restricted portions of the street and also adjacent to the fire hydrant. They also noted that there is no additional space available along the property frontage also to provide additional parking. A person who lives nearby also pointed out that finding street parking in that area is very difficult and providing approval for the addition of 2 units would add on the inconvenience. Considering all these aspects the board decided to deny the petition with a unanimous vote against the petition. The board stated that the space on the ground floor can also be rented to office spaces not only to commercial space.
- The second petition was by Walnut Star, LLC for reducing the number of EV parking spots in the community. The community has 121 parking spots out of which 5 parking spots were supposed to have EV charging stations based on the regulation that for every 25 parking spots the community should have 1 EV charging enabled parking spot, but the petitioner wanted to reduce the number to 2 out the 5 spots. The petitioner claimed that the number of people having electric vehicles is very minute compared to the gas tun vehicles so he initially he wanted the board to provide a relaxation to reduce the EV parking spots and based on the demand he planned to increase the EV enables parking spots. The board asked if the petitioner has the data to support the claim, the petitioner used the data they had collected from other cities in Indiana that the percentage of people using EV vehicles is very low. 2 out the 5 members in the board stated that they use electric vehicles, and they find it very difficult to charge vehicles due to the lack of charging stations in the town and this is the reason why people are not shifting to electric vehicles. Basing their point on this they also stated that with the provision more and more people will be interested to switch to electric vehicles and in turn help the city to become greener. The variance was also denied with a unanimous vote against the petition.
Meeting Resolution?
Both the petitions were denied by the board as both the variance would cause a lot of the inconvenience to the residents of the communities and also the residents of the town. The first petition requesting the conversion of commercial space into residences without the addition of parking spaces would force the residents to park their vehicles in restricted spaces of the street which would cause congestion of the street causing a lot of inconvenience to the citizens of the town. The board said that the space can be instead be used as office space or can be rented out to non-profit organizations. The second petition to reduce the minimum number of EV enables parking spaces from 5 to 2 was also denied by the board as this will cause inconvenience to the residents who have electric vehicles and also discourage people who plan to switch to electric vehicles from gas run vehicles. As this decision indirectly effect the health of the citizens of the town and is against the policies of the town to become greener this variance was denied unanimously.
Smart City Technologies To solve the Problems?
In case of the first petition the lack of parking spaces can be solved by using a hydraulic car stacker. This is a hydraulic lift which can stack 2 cars one above the other this way a single car parking can be used to accommodate 2 cars in the same space. I have seen this technology being implemented in most of the cities and towns in India to tackle the issue of scarcity of parking spaces. Most of the cities in India also have multi story underground parking for all the buildings.
In the case of the second petition the board has to provide some kind of an incentive or tax exemption for installing electric charges in the community this way even the developers will be interested in installing the charging stations. The local government should also setup free charging stations in the town that would encourage more and more people to switch to electric vehicles and wont be an burden on the developers.
Personal Thoughts and Reflection:
I felt it very interesting how the locals are involved in the decision making the process and also how enthusiastic the people were to take part in the process. I personally thought that in the first petition the petitioner could come up with a better idea to solve the issue instead of just claiming that the residents don’t have personal vehicles. In case of the second petition, I felt that was the right decision to deny the variance as Bloomington does not have public charging stations in the town. I feel that the local governing body should also build public free charging stations and also provide incentives to electric car buyers to promote the usage of electric vehicles. They should also provide some kind of incentives or benefits to the developers to install charging stations as this will also encourage them to build more charging stations voluntarily.
Citations
https://bloomington.in.gov/onboard/meetingFiles/download?meetingFile_id=11608
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