The council chambers were full and the agenda was packed for October’s first Valparaiso City Council meeting held on October 13th, 2025 at 6pm which went for over two and a half hours. There was one resolution, four ordinances, and one proposed ordinance brought up for discussion. The resolution was for a seven year tax abatement for a new building on Transport Dr. between Ivy Teck and the airport. The building would be leased by SENSIT Technologies and would allow them to expand. SENSIT, who currently works out of two buildings just next door, makes gas detection devices and environment monitoring devices used around the globe, including by our own fire department. The tax abatement would faze in over seven years the increase in property taxes from the new development. The resolution was passed unanimously by council.
The council passed the Valparaiso Community Schools 2026 budget. The budget for one year to run all of Valparaiso’s schools is one hundred and four million nine hundred and eighty thousand nine hundred and twenty eight dollars, that’s almost double the city’s budget. Valpo schools are at six thousand two hundred eighty four students, down seventy from last year. The city budget was next with a brief overview. The city’s budget for 2026 is fifty four million eight hundred and two thousand forty nine dollars, seventy one percent of which is employee wages and benefits. There will be a complete breakdown of the 2026 budget with public comment on Friday October 17th from 5 to 6 pm at a special budget City Council meeting at the City Hall’s council chambers. In addition to the ordinance for the city’s budget there must be a separate ordinance for salaries of city employees, everyone will be getting a two thousand dollar raise in 2026.
The last ordinance on the agenda was Barb Domer’s Ordinance No. 20, 2025 creating the Valparaiso Citizens Redistricting Advisory Commission. This ordinance would affect the required redistricting for Valparaiso after the 2030 census. The ordinance, if voted in after the next reading, would form a group of citizens to redistrict Valparaiso for council seats. In years prior a consulting firm has been used. This was covered in detail in a Panorama Now article a little over a week ago.
During council discussion of the ordinance partisan party lines were drawn over the issue of The League of Women Voters ( LWV ) being a nonpartisan group and their role in the formation of this ordinance. Council members Cotton, Domer and Hunt stressed LWV’s nonpartisan political stance while Pupillo and Anderson drew that into question.
Pupillo said “I think we all support fair maps and transparent government. But I think when you talk about an organization that says they’re nonpartisan and then supports traditionally very progressive left things like no voter id law and abortion rights, then it starts to kind of conflate the issue of fair maps and representation, and I think that’s where the confusion comes from… and so I think because of that we owe residents a little bit of extra scrutiny. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.”
Mayor Costas was forced to gavel the crowd and council after Councilman Anderson said “There is not a person in this room who believes League of Women Voters is nonpartisan” to which Councilwoman Hunt and all the women in the audience from LWV started raising their hands and saying “I do”. From The LWV of Porter county’s Facebook page mission statement it says they are “proud to be nonpartisan, neither supporting nor opposing candidates or political parties at any level of government, but always working on vital issues of concern to members and the public.” It is their “issues of concern” that may skew into partisan issues. Councilwoman Hunt mentioned that in 2016 the Valpo council approved legislation “In which the council called for a citizen-led redistricting commission at a state level. I can think of no reason why that wouldn’t be appropriate at a local level as well.” Councilman Pupillo asked “whether Valpo’s current maps were unfair.”
Councilwoman Domer responded “This has nothing to do with the current maps, this initiative I’m proposing is for maps that will be drawn in the future.” At the public forum for this ordinance though she said “what happened in 2022 was the city of Valparaiso maps were being redrawn after the 2020 census and we found out that the city of Valparaiso had entered into a contractual agreement with an attorney from Indianapolis to draw our city of Valparaiso City Council District maps, and this attorney was contracted at a cost of fifty thousand dollars and he actually was the former speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives who in 2012 was the Speaker of the House when the maps were drawn in what resulted in the supermajority that we are living in today.” That supermajority was already being formed though with the 2010 GOP wave that changed our House of Representatives from 52 Democrats and 48 Republicans to 60 Republicans and 40 Democrats.
The last council discussion for the evening initiated by Councilman Cotton was a proposed unified zoning ordinance concerning the growing number of gas stations in town. Cotton and councilwoman Kapitan expressed concern over the number of convenient store gas stations already in town with more being planned. Cotton’s point was we already have more gas stations per capita than the national average, and that perhaps we need to get ahead of any gas station wars that will drive that number even higher by limiting where and if new stations can be built with city code. Mayor Costas pushed back on this idea “I’d like to offer a few comments. First of all we are getting ready to embark on a new comprehensive plan and an update of our UDO (Unified Development Ordinance). We’re in the process of selecting the consultants to help us to do that which is significant and important work that we do on a regular basis and that will, having a new comprehensive plan, will address these issues in a more holistic fashion and this can be one of those issues that can be part of that discussion… We are a community where people come to do business, we have a lot more restaurants than the average community. We have a lot of big boxes (stores) in our community so we draw from a large area. So to some degree that impacts these numbers, as opposed to being way out in rural communities. We are a community of choice when it comes to shopping.” We will see if this moves forward with the council. If you have any opinions on city business make sure your voice is heard at the next City Council meeting’s public comment October 27th at 6:00pm.
Valparaiso City Council meetings are held on the second and fourth Mondays of each month.
Meeting Time: The meetings begin at 6:00 PM.
Location: The meetings are held in the City Council chambers at City Hall.
Public Access: The meetings are open to the public, and citizens can attend in person.
Meetings are Recorded: Watch City Council Meetings Online here
Public Participation:Citizens can address the council during designated periods, often with time limits and specific protocols.
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Susie Young Baxter, CEO, has published PanoramaNOW Magazine for 31 years. Her hobbies are Camping, Boating, Hiking, Nature, Gardening and Outdoor Activities. She is an Artist, Graphic Designer, an Avid Seamstress, Dabbles in Homemade Crafts and Landscaping. Since her Father was a Health Teacher, she also likes homeopathic Health Solutions. Since blogging started over 10 years ago, PanoramaNow has been added to Newsbreak – a national news affiliate.
