The Valparaiso City Council is keeping tabs on the regularly occurring protests on the downtown courthouse lawn.
During his public safety report at the city council meeting on Monday, April 13, Council Member Jack Pupillo, R-4th, the council’s public safety liaison, told the council that protesters are “starting to not cooperate with the police department.”
“What is the breakdown?” asked Council Member Emilie Hunt, D-At-Large.
“All I know is that there’s not much communication going (on),” he replied. “There’s been a breakdown in communication, and I think it’s kind of detrimental to the law and order of our downtown.”
“Maybe we could help bridge that,” Hunt said.
Mayor Jon Costas said there were two groups in question at the latest rally and the city was not able to make contact with the larger group.
“They didn’t fill out a petition for orderly assembly,” he said, adding that there was one “patron complaint.”
“We got one patron complaint, but have we gotten any business complaints?” Hunt asked.
Costas said not that he was aware of, and Council Member Robert Cotton, D-2nd, said he’s heard from multiple businesses happy about the protests because the protesters come in and have lunch when they’re done protesting.
After her Valparaiso Community Schools liaison report, Hunt took the opportunity to address social media posts regarding the LGBT community and the city’s Human Relations Committee. She gave a brief history of the committee’s founding in 2008 and formalization in 2011, reading from an ordinance to inform of its original purpose that included serving as a liaison to the mayor’s office when incidents of bigotry and intolerance were part of the city experience.
“The council may also use the HRC as a voice on behalf of those members of the community who believe they are disadvantaged because of their membership in a historically disadvantaged group, and the HRC may be requested to identify means of informing the community through communication about the benefits of diversity, and harms of exclusion,” she read.
“Some of the recent posts online targeting our LGBT community do exactly the opposite of that and I anticipate a healthy discussion on why those posts are being made, who is precipitating those posts, and the damage that they are doing to members of our community and members of a community that historically have one of the highest rates of suicide, specifically amongst our teenagers.”
In other business, the council revisited two ordinances, with an explanation from Clerk-Treasurer Holly Taylor on why the redo was necessary.
Both Ordinance No. 1-2026, an ordinance appropriating funds in the Cumulative Capital Development Fund, and Ordinance No. 4-2026, an ordinance appropriating funds in the General Fund (General Services), were unanimously approved by the full council. “Previously, I had to post in the newspaper 10 days prior to a public hearing,” Taylor explained.
“Around Christmastime, the Department of Local Government Finance sent out a blast – an email – that said they were no longer going to require for us to post them in the newspaper. They were going to be requiring us to post them on Indiana Gateway, which is a public portal for citizens to look at any of our financial information. The deadline for that is 14 days prior.”
Ordinance No. 9-2026, an ordinance appropriating funds in the cigarette tax, also passed, but by a vote of 5-to-2. Pupillo and fellow Council Member Peter Anderson, R-5th, voted against it on principle, explaining after the meeting that their colleagues normally put appropriations “through the wringer.”
“If we’re going to go by that same standard, where are the invoices?” asked Pupillo. “How are we going to spend the money?”
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
