Lot, home size minimums may shrink in town
The Nashville Town Council is considering allowing homes to be built on smaller lot sizes than it has in the past, and perhaps smaller home sizes as well, following similar changes in the county.
Town Attorney James T. Roberts has mentioned this idea at the past several council meetings. With new members joining the council, he wanted to see if there was still interest in making changes. The two new members, Nancy Crocker and Anna Hofstetter, were interested.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, according to public opinion, that we have a housing shortage in this town, especially affordable housing, and we need solutions,” Hofstetter said at the Jan. 17 meeting. “This is a first step.”
The revisions the council is considering would shrink lot size requirements on land zoned R1 and R2 (both residential) and RB (restricted buffer) in town limits. In R1, the minimum lot size is currently 12,000 square feet; in R2 and RB, it’s 6,000 square feet for a single-family home. If it’s a multi-family home, the minimum lot size is 3,000 square feet per dwelling unit, Roberts said.
The proposal is to make the minimum 6,000 square feet across the board, limiting two-family dwellings to R2 and RB zones only, Roberts said.
The minimum size for the ground floor of a home also is up for discussion. Currently in R1, the minimum is 1,200 square feet, which is twice the county’s new minimum for a structure, Roberts said. In R2, the current minimum square footage in town is 800 for a ground floor; in business zones, minimum square footage is 600. Roberts tossed out the idea of making square footage the same across the board as well, perhaps 800.
“The idea is to give a little more flexibility, perhaps for a future development to make more affordable housing,” he said.
Many of the town’s lot and home size requirements were established in the 1960s, Roberts said.
Before any changes are made, Roberts planned to talk to the county’s planning and zoning office to see how the town’s current ordinances were actually being enforced. For instance, he didn’t know if apartment buildings were being made to sit on land that’s sized according to how many actual dwelling units were in them. “We may want to amend to conform with reality,” he said.
He told the council he might have something to present to them at their next meeting, which is Thursday, Feb. 21.
Crocker encouraged him to have “visuals of actual lots and houses” to help people understand the sizes.
Council member David Rudd said Nashville is one of the only places in the county with sewer access, which makes it easier to bring lot sizes down. “We’re going to have to promote that, I think, because we want more people,” he said.
“Reducing the lot size will make development much more attractive to developers,” Roberts said, “because land’s a raw material, just like bricks and 2-by-4s.”
Town trying again to change busy intersection
The town is going to try again to rework the intersection of State Road 46 East and Hawthorne Drive with a Community Crossings grant.
The state previously denied the town’s request for funding to realign the intersection, making a dedicated turn lane off of Hawthorne onto 46. The intersection is wide enough to do it, and some drivers act as if there is one, but that’s not officially how the traffic pattern works.
The town already has permits and engineered drawings to do the work; it just needs the state to say “yes” to get the grant money to do it, said Nashville Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday. The town has until Feb. 1 to submit a Community Crossings application, he said.
Last fall, using Community Crossings money, the town widened and repaved Hawthorne Drive from the McDonald’s area to the end of the road at the police station to three lanes, and added a sidewalk along one side.
This year, the town is using Community Crossings money to repave Old State Road 46 from the McGee Road area into town.
Public safety questions asked of police chief
Why doesn’t Nashville have bicycle cops anymore, and can we bring them back? That’s one of the public safety questions Nashville Town Council members asked of Chief of Police Ben Seastrom at the last council meeting.
Bike cops are a voluntary program, and the last officer who did it regularly has retired, Seastrom said.
There’s a stigma in the police world that bike cops are a “demotion,” he said. His officers would prefer to walk than ride, and they do foot patrols at times, he added. He thought they might even like to patrol on horseback, but that’s an expensive program. Regardless, those all pull an officer away from his vehicle, which has become more and more integral to his job. The car is an officer’s main dispatch center and his computer workstation. “It takes away the ability for them to do their job efficiently,” Seastrom said.
Getting a handheld unit would connect them to what they need, but each would cost thousands of dollars, Seastrom said.
If his officers, most of whom are in their 20s, were required to do bike patrol shifts, he predicted he’d have a “massive quit.”
“Well, then we’ll just get new people. … I’m sorry,” said council member Anna Hofstetter, who had posed the bike question in the first place.
“Bike patrol does not improve public safety. It’s visual only,” Seastrom said. “They’re more efficient and more effective in a vehicle.”
Council member Nancy Crocker asked for more help educating drivers about crosswalks on State Road 46, especially in the school campus area. The Nashville Arts and Entertainment Commission has been making plans to paint some crosswalks with a distinctive leaf design so that maybe they can be more noticeable.
Audience member Andrew Tilton asked if the speed limit could be lowered on 46 coming into town from the Bloomington side, or maybe rumble strips could be added. Audience member Jessica George asked about installing a flashing school zone light.
Those items would be under the control of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which is in charge of state roads, said Nashville Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday. It was suggested that town leaders try to get another meeting with INDOT to deal with these concerns before going to the next level, which could be lobbying the state legislature.
Wells Drive parking issue not resolved yet
Town council members will be inspecting Wells Drive in person before deciding whether or not to allow a resident to continue parking a car alongside the road.
Resident Dan Snow spent more than 30 minutes of the January council meeting making a case for why he shouldn’t have to build another parking spot for one of his three cars. Two fit on his property; the third he has been parking alongside the road for years, he said.
The police department had received at least one complaint that Snow’s car was restricting traffic flow on the narrow street. Nashville firefighters also repeated concerns that they need more space to safely get emergency vehicles through than what they currently have.
There’s also an ordinance against parking on the road, said Chief of Police Ben Seastrom, and if one person is allowed to do it, he’s afraid that more people will, which would make the problem worse.
Town Attorney James T. Roberts said that the road right-of-way appeared to be 30 feet, so it didn’t matter how long someone had been parking there; if it’s within the town’s right-of-way, that space belonged to the town.
Council member Anna Hofstetter asked for road measurements and the amount of space needed to open doors on emergency vehicles, which nobody had handy. That’s why council members planned to visit in person before their February meeting. Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday said he thought it probably ought to be a one-way road because it is so narrow — but changing it to one-way wouldn’t resolve the parking situation.
Besides arguing that he’s always been able to park there, Snow said he’s applying for a home stay permit and that extra parking could be needed if he had a tenant.
