WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — At this week’s city council meeting, they were back.
With one woman holding a neon sign reading “Reverse the rezone” and other familiar faces from recent public meetings, the effort to turn back the council’s May vote to rezone a large site on the north side of the city publicly resumed.
Lora Marie Williams and Karl Janich, two residents suing the city for its decision, were there, along with others who have repeatedly appeared before city officials to ask that they consider the majority of public opinion against aspects of the project to build a semiconductor packaging plant near homes, sometimes issuing emotional appeals or lambasting the entire process.
At one point, resident Christopher DeMarco craned his neck toward Mayor Erin Easter, seated behind him, and said she could move from the city when she’s voted out, referencing comments he said she had made months earlier. Easter shook her head.
West Lafayette residents Helen DeMarco and Sarah Ruh began the meeting’s public comment window by reading a letter posted on the blog site Medium this week.
With a dozen signatures at the bottom, including from a few who spoke Tuesday, the letter argues that the council dismissed safety concerns and public comment from residents who live within blocks of the facility site, bending to influence from Purdue Research Foundation, Purdue University and SK hynix, the South Korean company operating the plant, to push the project through.
Among the most heavily applauded comments came from Kristen Patton, a resident from University Farms, the neighborhood diagonal from the project site.
“At the end of the May 5 meeting, Councilor Lee asked if other sites were available,” she said. “The PRF representative said, ‘No,’ and that answer was taken at face value. But the question wasn’t whether PRF had other sites. The question should have been, are there better, already zoned industrial locations in our area? And the answer to that is ‘Yes.’”
‘A meaningless procedural show’
The letter called out at-large Rep. Iris Bellisario in particular.
The preamble Bellisario gave to her May 5 vote broke up the previous five hours of mostly negative public commentary. As she explained that she would vote to approve the rezone, she was peppered with dissent from the crowd in front of her.
“The actions of councilor Iris Bellisario clearly illustrate the degree to which this vote was predetermined,” the letter reads. “Her prepared statement … transformed seven hours of passionate public testimony … into a meaningless procedural show.”
Bellisario said she had read a prepared statement that night, but that didn’t mean she disregarded public comment.
“I didn’t have my mind completely made up,” she said after Tuesday night’s meeting. “I was flip-flopping nonstop.”
The council member said she often prepares statements ahead of contentious votes, both for and against, as many council members do. When she arrived at the May 5 meeting, she said she had only summarized her stance on the many arguments presented to her in the months preceding the vote. The final paragraphs, in which she explained her vote, were written from her council chair.
She maintains that arguments for the dangers of semiconductor production refer mostly to phases of the process that will not take place in West Lafayette. The online letter links to accidents, deadly in one case, at SK hynix plants in South Korea and China.
Bellisario also said residents against the SK Hynix plans have harassed her family, sending their objections to her father, brother and boyfriend rather than her city phone number or email account.
“That’s a violation of my privacy,” she said.
Non-disclosure agreement accusations
A few councilors scrunched their faces Tuesday night, puzzled, they later said, at accusations that some signed non-disclosure agreements protecting information they received about the SK hynix project.
Members of the contingent against the project’s rezoning said they had formed this impression based on comments from at-large Rep. David Sanders on May 5.
Sanders clarified Tuesday night that he never signed, nor was he asked to sign an NDA or any such document, though he said he could not speak for his fellow councilors. At-large reps. Bellisario and James Blanco said they hadn’t been offered any protected information and didn’t believe other councilors had, either.
Sanders said that in a meeting between himself and project leaders, at which he was the only city councilor present, he received information — mostly about an earlier, similar project that fell through —that was covered by an NDA, and thereby not for public disclosure.
In a lengthy statement Sanders gave before his May 5 vote, he mentioned the NDA-protected information but never said he or other councilors were presented such a document.
Construction on its way?
County surveyor Zach Beasley told the Journal & Courier that the Tippecanoe County drainage board approved the first step in the nearly $4 billion plant’s construction Wednesday morning, to level the ground at the planned construction site.
Beasley said he expects the project to need a second round of approvals from both the county and city for the rest of its plans, covering utilities, internal workings and discharges.
He said he didn’t know what the timeline might be on those approvals.
Israel Schuman is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. You can reach him at ieschuma@purdue.edu or on X @ischumanwrites.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: ‘Reverse the rezone’: SK hynix protest returns 4 months after WL City Council passage
Reporting by Israel Schuman, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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