02-19-20 CCAC - Laserfiche WebLink

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Chairperson Tomas Morgan opened the floor to discussion about the current section of the South Bend Municipal Code that guides and directs the CCAC. Chairperson Tomas Morgan then gave the floor to Richard Nussbaum to speak to the history of the enacting ordinance for CCAC. Mr. Nussbaum discussed his history and experience with the City of South Bend and his involvement with the spawn of the Community Campus Advisory Coalition Ordinance. He shared his personal connections to all the educational institutions in the South Bend area. The original Ordinance was passed in 2007 with additional sections that were not fully implemented, specifically Section 14-53 which pertains to the permitting and enforcement part of the Ordinance. That section has not been activated since 2007,the main reason being that the CCAC was formed. Good work was done to address the concerns being raised by citizens and Council Members with regard to, mainly, student activity in the neighborhood. Notre Dame students living off campus were not being very good citizens at that time. During the summer of 2007, the then-Student Body President of Notre Dame,Ms. Liz Brown, contacted Mr. Nussbaum. Ms. Brown was concerned about this particular Ordinance. The Council had legitimate concerns, but Mr. Nussbaum questioned the timing of the introduction of the Ordinance, when all the students were back at their homes over the summer. There wasn't a good opportunity for there to be dialogue about it. To the Council's credit, they delayed public action on it until the fall of 2007. Mr. Nussbaum contented that the Coalition was very successful early on in its original conception and he admitted that things may, as of now, have slid a little bit. He commended Ms. Brown for taking it seriously at that time. The Council raised concerns about the behavior of the students living off campus. Mr. Nussbaum claimed that sometimes students may not realize that by being given a bit more freedom living off campus comes with a bit more responsibility of being proper neighbors. Ms. Brown convinced the Council at the time that this Coalition should be adopted without the more onerous sections of the Ordinance being implemented. The coalition met regularly and there has been an ebb and flow of people that have participated. Off campus living is not just a north east neighborhood issue- it is a City-wide issue. The Coalition started running and when problems arose, they were addressed. The sense at that point was that things were going pretty well, and students were taking the initiative to introduce themselves to the neighbors. Students comes and go so we had to make sure that the leadership that comes on understands some of the responsibilities that the leadership has with regard to off campus students. The student body presidents of all the campuses do a really good job of that. Matt Costello is an important member to the Coalition because he lives in the neighborhood and he can speak to his experiences. Matt Costello spoke to the history of the ordinance and his personal experience with off campus student housing. He and his wife Annie bought a house on Notre Dame Avenue and Colfax about twenty-five (25) years ago and set out to lovingly restore the house. Soon after theymoved in,theysaw an alarmingtrend where one(1)neighbor gY g after another would sell to Mark Kramer to make them into student party houses. House after house were sold and we got more and more student party houses. By 2008, Mr. Kramer had eighty-four (84) what Mr. Costello calls `party houses.' What Mr. Costello means by party house is when more than two (2) unrelated people live together. In the Ordinance, they call them boarding houses. The trend finally stopped about the same time as the Coalition was created and theyput into Code that no more than two (2) unrelated people can live in one(1) unit. p p So, that was a big help toward stopping the trend, Mr. Costello believes. There are twenty-four(24) student party houses close enough that Mr. Costello has been woken up by. It is very troublesome in that, at its worst, the students had the sense that they owned the neighborhood,in Mr. Costello's opinion. He claims the students would take their drinks, parties and kegs into the front yard, into the streets and going house to house. People would be staggering, vomiting and urinating, and obviously neighbors couldn't tolerate that and many of them left. Since the Coalition started, it has been better,but things have slipped. The part Mr. Nussbaum referred to as the onerous part of the Ordinance is that part that Mr. Costello believes should have stayed because, in his opinion, it has teeth. What it said was that in a boarding house- a house with two (2) or more unrelated people -that in order to have a party of more than twenty-five (25) people in which alcohol would be served, they would need to get a permit. Mr. Costello believes it is regrettable that part of the Ordinance didn't get implemented. Instead, there was the Coalition. Mr. Costello still believes that the Coalition could have done more to have some teeth and take a more active role. Mr. Costello quoted the Ordinance and reiterated that it states the Coalition's job is to make recommendations to the Common Council,but he claimed that never in his ten(10)years being on the Committee had he remembered a vote on a recommendation. He gave an example of asking landlords take out the use of