Middlebury residents tell Elkhart County commissioners Riverbend rezoning ignored community concerns

Stephanie Kaufman of Middlebury told the Elkhart County Board of Commissioners she and neighbors felt sidelined after the county approved rezoning for the Riverbend Apartments, saying many petition signers—she said most were Amish—had not seen the developer's plans before signing. "Nobody was for it other than the investors who stand to make a bunch of money," Kaufman said, describing a roomful of opponents that she said left feeling ignored.

Kaufman said traffic studies appear to undercount horse-and-buggy traffic and raised safety concerns for animals and residents when long construction delays left buggies stalled on the road. "The problem is when you have a horse and it's acting up because it does not want to sit in traffic," she said, pressing the board for consideration of local travel patterns.

Pam Kaiser, also from Middlebury, told commissioners that petition signatures gathered door-to-door were wrongly dismissed by county officials and accused the town and developer of presenting misleading materials. Kaiser said door-to-door canvassing by Tom and Donna Kearney produced 284 signatures opposing the rezoning and that the county dismissed 74 signatures from nearby villas and 210 from the town-area canvassers. "For you to show this elderly veteran this level of disrespect is appalling," she said, referring to a petitioner she described as a Vietnam veteran.

Kaiser directly challenged the commissioners' treatment of petitions and said the board's votes were "contrary to the will of the people." She cited an official rendering she said remained the only developer rendering on record and disputed a commissioner’s earlier characterization that signers were misled.

County officials did not take further public action on the rezoning during the meeting; public comment concluded after the speakers finished. The board did not announce a re-hearing or reversal of the prior zoning vote at the April 27 session.