Valparaiso Mayor Matt Murphy

Valparaiso Mayor Matt Murphy led his final city council meeting Monday.

Valparaiso is pausing its South Shore Connect service, effective January 1. It provides bus transportation between the parking lot near Journeyman Distillery, Valparaiso University and the Dune Park South Shore station.

The city of Valparaiso is preparing for potential changes to State Road 130. The board of works last week agreed to hire civil engineering firm EMCS to perform a traffic analysis of the highway's intersection with Tower Road, at a cost of $9,600.

Porter County's former director of development and stormwater management has gotten a job with the city of Valparaiso. Bob Thompson has been hired as a deputy engineer, according to a city press release.

The completion of a Valparaiso medical building that's sat unfinished for years remains held up by legal challenges. City Attorney Patrick Lyp says work on the building at 1425 Glendale began in 2018 but largely ground to a halt by 2021, when the developer didn't pay its subcontractors. Another challenge is that the site's former owner, Porter Hospital, didn't want it to be used for medical purposes.

The board that oversees the South Shore Line has a couple new members.

Valparaiso's new police chief was officially sworn into office during Monday's city council meeting. Andrew McIntyre said he was "extremely humbled and honored to be selected."

Valparaiso Mayor Matt Murphy will not run for a second term.

The City of Valparaiso has set up a financing mechanism for a proposed downtown parking garage, but not without some opposition. The 300-space Lincoln Highway Garage would be built at the northeast corner of Lincolnway and Morgan to coincide with the Linc development.

A Valparaiso City Council member wants to follow Porter County's lead and establish committees to allocate the city's COVID-19 money. Robert Cotton told the rest of the city council Monday that leaving Mayor Matt Murphy in charge of dividing up the American Rescue Plan funds seemed like a "narrow funnel."