April 17, 2007
(26)
Lawrence Community Shelter land use items:
a) Consider Planning Commission recommendation to approve, subject to conditions, SUP-01-02-07, a Special Use Permit for the Lawrence Community Shelter, located at 944 Kentucky Street.
b) Conduct public hearing regarding the structure located at 944 Kentucky Street and make a determination based on a consideration of all relevant factors that there is/is not a feasible and prudent alternative to the proposed conditions of approval for the Special Use Permit for the Lawrence Community Shelter. The Historic Resources Commission approved (HRC Item 8; approved 3-2 on 2/15/07) the item, but the property owner is appealing a condition of approval (DR-01-06-07).
Mayor Hack called a public hearing regarding the structure located at 944 Kentucky Street to make a determination based on a consideration of all relevant factors that there is/is not a feasible and prudent alternative to the proposed conditions of approval for the Special Use Permit for the Lawrence Community Shelter.
Lisa Pool, Planner, presented the staff report on the Special Use Permit for the Lawrence Community Shelter located at 944 Kentucky Street. She said the property was zoned RMD (Multi-Dwelling Residential Office District). She said some of the associated cases related to the Lawrence Community Shelter were:
● UPR-09-06-05: A request to extend the Use Permitted upon Review for the Lawrence Community Shelter. [The City Commission approved the UPR for one year on March 7, 2006, subject to conditions.]
● On January 16, 2007, the City Commission voted to extend UPR-09-06-05 to April 17, 2007 to allow for Planning Commission consideration of the new LCS Special Use Permit extension request in March 2007 with City Commission consideration of the Planning Commission’s recommendation on April 17, 2007.
● On February 15, 2007, the Historic Resources Commission approved the LCS Special Use Permit (DR-01-06-07), subject to conditions.
She said site plans were required with the SUP applications and the only thing that would change on the site plan was to update the plan based on the City Commission’s determinations.
She said a summary of the subject SUP was as follows:
· During 2006, the shelter served 15,202 guests during the daytime and 7,526 guests overnight. 376 separate individuals were served from July 1, 2006 to December 31, 2006.
· In 2006, 21 people found jobs, 27 people moved into housing, and 11 people entered a detoxification or rehabilitation facility.
She said the applicant was requesting a 5 year approval of the SUP and staff had recommended a one year approval, no site plan changes were requested, and a police report was included in the City Commission’s packet which indicated an increase in police calls in cases over the past 4 years.
She informed the City Commission of the conditions of approval for the SUP which were revised for the Planning Commission.
She said a protest petition was filed with the City Clerk’s Office within 14 days of the public hearing. She said 12.8% of property owners within the 200-foot notification area had submitted petitions, but after further review it was actually 18.17% based on re-verification of the petition. Petitions were only valid when at least 20% of the property within the 200-foot notification area had signed petitions.
If the Commission chose a one year approval or any of the conditions were revised, the ordinance would be brought back to the City Commission at a later meeting.
Lynne Braddock Zollner, Historic Resources Administrator, said she was present for the appeal of the 944 Kentucky Street HRC review. This determination by the HRC for the Special Use Permit was a bit different than determinations made in the past. The HRC did approve the SUP with an associated site plan, but one of the conditions for that approval was the removal of a canopy and fence and the applicant was appealing that determination for that condition.
She said the 944 Kentucky structure was listed as a non-contributing structure to the Oread Historic District which was listed on the Historic Register of Kansas Places and was pending National Register listing. The structure was also in the environs of several properties listed on the National Register.
The HRC reviewed property for State law review and the City of Lawrence had an agreement with the State Historic Preservation Office to conduct State law reviews on the local level and the HRC was the body that did those reviews. She said for those reviews for properties listed on the National or Kansas Register, the HRC must use the Secretary of Interior Standards for that review.
The HRC did approve DR-01-06-07 with the conditions that were listed in the staff report and the applicant was appealing the determination because of the removal request for the carport and the fence.
Per K.S.A. 75-2724, the City Commission must hold a public hearing and determine if there was a feasible and prudent alternative to the project. If no feasible and prudent alternative was available, the City Commission must determine if all possible planning had been done to minimize harm to the listed properties.
The City Commission looked at this appeal with separate standards than the HRC looked at the review process. The HRC looked at whether or not a project damaged or encroached upon a listed property. The City Commission had more leeway with their determination because the City Commission could determine whether or not it was feasible and prudent and they could also look at economic factors as well as whether or not it encroached upon the listed property.
The HRC recommendation was to approve the SUP, but remove the non-compliant carport and the fence. Planning staff and the Historic Resource Administrator recommended the HRC findings stand and the carport and fence be removed. If the applicant wanted some type of shelter, they suggested the applicant go through the process and find something that was compatible with the historic district.
Commissioner Amyx asked if a feasible and prudent alternative existed if the applicant took down the carport and fence.
Zollner said that would be a feasible and prudent alternative and another feasible and prudent alternative would be to construct a shelter that was of compatible material with the district.
Mayor Hack said Pool indicated that Planning Staff recommended a one year SUP. The applicant wanted a five year SUP and the Planning Commission split the difference and ended up with a 3 year SUP which was depicted in Ordinance No. 8100.
Pool said yes. She said she listed the three year and one year SUP for the City Commission.
Mayor Hack said regarding the one year SUP, Ordinance 8099, if the City Commission decided to approve that ordinance, she asked how the approval could be done.
Corliss said if it was not substantially different from the Planning Commission’s recommendation, the City Commission could approve the ordinance by a simple majority vote, 3 votes. He said the City Commission could also send the ordinance back by 3 votes or overrule the Planning Commission recommendation of the 3 year SUP with the conditions that were set out by a supermajority vote which was 4 or more Commissioners. He said if there was a majority of the City Commission that wanted a one year SUP, if there was not a supermajority, the City Commission could send it back to the Planning Commission with 3 votes.
Loring Henderson, Director of the Lawrence Community Shelter, said he was present to ask for City Commission approval of the Special Use Permit as it was approved and forwarded by the Planning Commission. He said homelessness was a complicated issue and the Shelter had done a lot in the recent years, to begin to deal with this problem. He said the need for immediate emergency shelter had been roughly met for individuals and the Shelter would be coming to the City Commission later in June from the Community Commission on Homelessness and their proposals for other phases of dealing with transitional housing and supportive housing. Without the higher level of services, the Shelter was re-institutionalizing people who were released from hospitals and were on the street and there was no place for those people to go besides the shelter. At the Lawrence Community Shelter, they dealt mainly with current homeless folks and with individuals who were frequently mentally ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol.
In the past year, LCS had met the conditions of the UPR. They developed the good neighbor agreement and currently had 45 signatures which was a work in progress and more signatures were coming in. He said the agreement was done in collaboration with the Community Cooperation Community, a subsidiary of the Community Commission on Homelessness. In addition, the Shelter developed a small postcard that was being delivered to downtown businesses along Massachusetts or the central business district. Again, he said this agreement was done in cooperation with the Community Cooperation Committee and some discussions with representatives of Downtown Lawrence, Inc. He said the idea was the post card had phone numbers on it, including his cell phone, and he was available if there was a situation which was the focus of the Good Neighbor Agreement, as well, to promote communication so if there was an incident, they could call him and not wait for a lot later time to come before the City Commission to say something when he did not have specifics. He said that was what they were working for in their outreach efforts in various ways.
He said the police logs and hazard logs were kept and continued to be kept. He said it was important to note the day calls were up about the same percentage and volume with the number of people coming to the Drop-In Center after the Salvation Army closed during the daytime. He said the number and percentage of night calls was down. He said dealing with police calls was certainly sensitive and involved a lot of fears on the part of individuals in the community at large, but it was important to note that people experiencing homelessness wanted everything everyone else in the community wanted which was safety and a sense of community. He said this was an issue that worked and affected homeless people very much.
He said he made an evaluation of staffing levels which was asked as a condition of the UPR last year. Therefore, he developed a job description and hired a person he called an outside monitor. That person was not someone who was bluntly a security guard, but someone who would be working outside and around the building given the situation with complex personalities the Shelter was faced with at that location.
He was also asked to develop a monitoring list of how to keep the shelter safe and suggestions for community fundraising. He said fundraising was a delicate area and anything the Shelter did was going to be private as well as public and were not looking to any single source.
He said in the last 8 months the Shelter had dealt with 442 separate signed in individuals at the Drop-In Center and the community outreach workers funded by the City through Bert Nash about the same period of time, one month longer, dealt with 555 individuals. He said those numbers gave the size that was fairly consistent with the survey done in January and issued and was a fairly good count of families as well as individuals.
He said the future of where the Shelter was going was a continuation and expansion of the current programs, case management jobs, collaboration with outside agencies and alcohol and drug intervention. He said the Shelter had continued partnerships with a list of agencies included in the materials the Commission received. LCS was going to be an organization meeting multiple demands with limited resources and was both a shelter and drop in center.
He said when a guest arrived, goals were set, a case worker was assigned, and the Shelter had actions and consequences which guests were given a copy of rights and responsibilities which needed the guest’s signature. He said in entering the program, the idea was to get the guest out of the shelter. He said an important part of the Shelter’s plan was the employment and job area in which they did three things.
1. The Joseph Project (dog biscuit project), was to develop small entrepreneurial projects and had 5 part-time people working, but the goal was to employ 10 people on that project.
2. Back to Work Program which was job coaching in which someone was taken individually from start to finish and worked with even after that person got a new job.
3. Tour de Workforce which there were resources in Lawrence for employment assistance, job searches, but was underutilized by many people. He said a group met at the Shelter and a Professor from KU would take people on the bus to the Workforce Center and go through all the materials and resources. The Tour de Workforce was a new project, but complimented the Joseph Project and the Back to Work Program.
Finally, he discussed the building search which was on a lot of people’s minds. He said he never said the shelter should stay at that location because it was not handicap accessible, the building was too small, inconvenient in many ways physically, and adjacent to a neighborhood that was difficult. He said he could not deny the obvious that any shelter for homeless people was going to put stress on a neighborhood. It was difficult in Lawrence to find the other side of the tracks area where there might be empty warehouses or something of that sort that would be amenable to be converted. He said maybe one suggestion would be for the City to say to a neighborhood if they took a shelter, they would give them X. He said the Shelter had been looking at buildings and came to the former Commission with a proposal to look into the Lakeview Nursing Home and had looked at other properties since then and it was a continuing thing. He said that was why the three year term was so important to him. He said he was the only one, in one part of the work that was done at the shelter and it did not seem like it, but it was work load that kept him from meetings with donors. He said it might seem counter intuitive somehow if the City Commission gave the Shelter three years, but it was giving the Shelter time to work with their own committee with neighborhoods, donors and other sources for creative financing. He said that was why they were asking for three years.
He said as far as the carport, what the Shelter called an awning, the idea was the awning was put there at the urging of the neighborhood, to draw people from the front of the Shelter to the back. The Oread Neighborhood Association helped them to pay for that awning. He said it was a cost effective measure and cost slightly less than $1,000 to put up and install. He said the awning had worked and people did sit under that awning because it kept those people out of the rain and drew people from the front, but not totally. He said the front was also used back and forth to LINK four days a week and was used in the wintertime when it was very cold because it was a south porch and had sun. He said their shelter was a temporary shelter and when the shelter moved, they would take the awning down. He said at this time it was not feasible for Shelter to rebuild or reinstall something else if the carport structure came down, there would not be a replacement.
He requested approval of the SUP as it was recommended by the Planning Commission.
Peter Zacharias, Downtown merchant, owner of a house in the area, spoke against the three year SUP approval. He said their neighborhood had a long relationship with the homeless in downtown which started innocently enough with one little agency being placed, and now there were over 40 agencies. He said over the last 5, 6, 7 years the homeless population, in the downtown area, had gone from 100 to now 400 or 500. He said it was not the right place for all of this activity. He said there were hundreds of police calls to the Shelter and he had a house at 10th and Ohio and had 6 incidents where homeless people followed other people to their home or apartment and accosted those people. He said there was even a young mother who was scared away as a tenant with her baby. He said to say it was a great relationship with the neighborhood was not true. He said most of the people the Shelter served needed help and were down on their luck, but there was a significant number that were mentally ill, drug addicted and were either at the homeless shelter or at large downtown day and night. He said it was his neighborhood and wanted to be able to live in his neighborhood with some safety, comfort, and with the knowledge they could go anywhere day and night all the time. He urged that the City Commission grant a one year permit and that they urgently and quickly find a new location. He said it was the wrong place for this number of people to be served in this way.
Henderson said in support of what the last speaker stated, the Shelter needed to get out of that location, but it would take more than a year, no matter how aggressive the Shelter would be. Van Go Mobile Arts did a groundbreaking this week for their expansion and renovation and it took Van Go a year and a half to raise the money. Salvation Army had been raising money for some time and there were other considerations there, but it would take more than a year.
Tracy Fields spoke in support of the three year SUP. He said he lived in Lawrence for only a year. He said he came to Lawrence in very terrible health with gout. He said the first thing he did was check into the Salvation Army and then went to the Drop In Center where he received help to get the medication he needed to control his gout. He said that enabled him to keep other things in line as far as his priorities as to what he needed to do. He said through the Drop in Center, he became involved in the Change of Heart which was a newsletter which was a newsletter where he contributed through writing and in his art work which was another fashion to make money. He said he was going to be involved with the project at the Lawrence Community Shelter. He said if it was not for the Drop in Center where he received the medication he needed at the time he would not know where he would be today. He said he appreciated the good help from all volunteers and Henderson who was compassionate and a tremendous asset to this community and hoped his speech would give the Shelter the three years they deserved.
Phil Hemphill, Lawrence, said Henderson used the words a “sense of safety” and a “sense of community” which struck a note. He said they had been trying as a neighborhood, for years now, to get the Shelter to respect the neighborhood by instituting some rules of behavior that would give their neighborhood that sense of safety and community. He said the new plan the Shelter was adopting and supported by 85 signatures, did not do anything to address the behavioral problems existing in their neighborhood. He said if he started tomorrow, he could come up with twice that number of signatures on paper. He said their neighborhood saw the problems every day with things like trespassing and defecation. He said the neighborhood problems were addressed after the fact. He would grant when he had a problem, Henderson addressed the problem, but it was always after the fact. The Shelter would not institute any rules of behavior, any measures the neighbors could use to stop the behavior. It was a problem when dealing with the type of individuals that did need help and so on, but there had to be some measures that could be taken to address those problems before the fact. He said he did not want to see an extension of three years and continue to have everything of being after the fact. He said he would suggest a maximum of a one year extension and would sincerely respectfully ask that it be irrevocable and that this was the last time. Unless the Shelter would readdress the concerns of the neighborhood, then that extension was it.
Kent Hayes, friend of the Lawrence Community Shelter, said he had been a homeless outreach specialist for Bert Nash and retired from Menninger Foundation. He said after he retired and took the job as a homeless outreach specialist, he thought he had understood the needs of this community and thought he understood the issues and problems people had in this community. He said he was truly educated when he started working with the Shelter and the Salvation Army. He said one of the things he discovered was the Lawrence Community Shelter, with its dedicated staff and volunteers, did a terrific job with many issues walking in their door, day in and day out. Many of the people who were creating the problems in the community that were just described were what the mental health system described as SPMI, Serious Persistent Mentally Ill people that were not getting help because they did not go for help. He said Henderson and his staff and volunteers did an amazing job keeping those people occupied and in many cases taking them to different programs and getting them involved in programs that without the Shelter they would not get involved in. It was one of the most amazing programs he had ever been connected with and would sincerely recommend the City Commission give them the SUP for three years. He said he knew for a fact the Shelter was looking very hard for another location and a location that would begin to do the things they needed to do.
Judy Sweets, Lawrence, said she became involved with the homeless community largely because her son was the editor of the Change of Heart publication. She said she had gotten to know a few of the homeless people and felt what they were doing down at the Shelter was just wonderful. She knew there had been a lot of frustrations in the neighborhood, but the Shelter had case managers who were trying to get case services to the homeless people. The main problem in Lawrence was people were not educated enough about what it was to be homeless and how the homeless were the most vulnerable citizens who had mental illness, some were veterans, and an increasing number of families with little children. She said housing and shelter for the most vulnerable citizens should be one of the top priorities.
She said the Change of Heart publication was distributed on the streets of Lawrence for a donation of $1.00, and the homeless people kept 75 cents out of that dollar which meant a lot to the homeless in earning that money and the self esteem that came from earning that money was phenomenal.
She said the entire community needed to pull together like they did for Habitat for Humanity and build a basic structure where people could have privacy and dignity and even have jobs on the site, such as learning how to cook or making a garden. She said she wanted to commend Henderson, his staff and the volunteers that put so much time into what they had right now and asked the City Commission to approve the extension for three years.
Sharilyn Wells said the City needed to help the Shelter find a solution otherwise the mentally ill with substance abuse problems and sometimes retarded people would be lying in the street and it was not tolerable. She said alternatives should be developed so the homeless could have permanent housing.
Herman Leon, Vice President of LINK, said this issue had been going on for a number of years. He said the real issue which had been faced over the years, was the management of social pain. He said what they were dealing with was not the problem of the homeless shelter, but a problem in this community with a population and many of whom had fallen through the cracks. He said if there were no shelter, those people would be roaming around, conditions would worsen, and frankly a certain amount of spirit in the town of Lawrence that let people brag this was a special kind of town. He said LINK represented about 45 different churches, synagogue organizations, youth groups from Lawrence and out of town, and for those unique people, LINK cooked food in their own homes and felt it was a service to offer a homemade lunch to LINK’s guests.
He said he would like the City to build Hemphill a nice fence around his property in order to alleviate trespassing, but Hemphill said a fence would get in the way. He said there had to be some way to mitigate the pain of the community. He said it was difficult, at times, to walk into the Drop in Center, but he recommended it. He said those people wanted peace, safety and security and could not imagine what would happen if there were no such institution.
Dustin Allen, LCS Volunteer and staff member, said he wanted to point out that he had never seen such a caring group of people that worked for the Shelter. He said it was a very difficult population to work with and there were a lot of things that were not understood about the homeless. He said it had been interesting in his classes to hear ideas in dealing with the issues of homelessness and the fact that Henderson was implementing those ideas from his textbooks. He said Henderson was a great individual and the Shelter was performing something that no one else could do at this time and it was a tough issue. He said there was not a set in stone way deal with homelessness, but thought the Shelter was doing the best job as possible.
Don Huggins, President of the LCS Board of Directors, said he wanted to discuss the police activity report. He said what caught his eye in the report was an increase in calls between 2005 and 2006, but what was really seen was calls went down at the Shelter, and up at the Drop in Center. He said he wanted to look at why they were experiencing a dramatic increase in the amount of daytime calls and cases. He said Henderson already mentioned they were dealing with an increase in the homeless population that was served, in part due to Salvation Army closing their daytime services and also it might be an artifact of the kinds of services that were offered which attracted people that wanted to get some kind of help from the City. He said when looking at the first set of graphs, which were the calls and the cases, he was a little bit taken back there was a 60% increase over last year. He said there was about a 15% increase with the number of people that they served between 2005 and 2006. He said estimated through their own logs was about 33% of those police calls were non clients, people who showed up and used the facility as a Drop in Center. He said all his information was off the Lawrence Police Department internet site, so the information was available to anyone who wanted to go look at it.
He said there were three primary groupings of the uniform criminal reporting classes, which was a fairly set kind of structure in terms of what constituted larceny and burglary with or without a weapon. He said there was a category of administrative calls which was someone following up on a call, report writing, and the normal police administration thing that happened on property. Another group was the criminal type of cases were fights, battery, theft and then finally, the public service, which was medical aid, traffic violations, welfare checks, that kind of thing. He said when looking at 2005 and 2006, there was really no change in that breakdown. There was a minimal increase of criminal calls, about 1%, which was not much. There was a small decrease in the administrative calls and activities on the property. He said the greatest increase was public service. He said it was a fairly stable breakdown.
He said he thought it would be unfair to look at their statistics unless putting it in front of them in a much larger perspective. He said LCS was embedded in a number of neighborhoods and embedded in the City of Lawrence. He said he went to the same data source and looked at the percent change from 2005 to 2006. He said he picked a number of areas off of the Lawrence Police Department website, and that neighborhood map did not necessarily follow neighborhood organizational maps, voting breakdown maps, but worked for the police in how the police wanted to report out and tracking increases and decreases.
He said he wanted to look across and see how the increase at the Lawrence Community Shelter compared to different areas. He picked Lawrence and looked at the overall statistic for Lawrence, because that was where he shopped, looked at Pinckney because that was where he lived, looked at East Lawrence because that was where he wanted to buy a house, and looked at LCS because that was where he volunteered. He said in looking at the bar graphs, there were up to two fold differences in the rate of increase in police cases depending on how the neighborhood units were looked at. He said Lawrence overall had about a 33% increase in the Uniform Criminal Reporting Units. He said he thought the Shelter reflected the general upswing of crime across Lawrence. The Lawrence Community Shelter was included in the downtown unit the police reported on. He said that downtown percent increase was about twice what the reported increase was for Lawrence. He said if they looked at the number of increased cases from 2005 to 2006, there were about 22 additional cases, downtown Lawrence had 363, which made up of about 6% to that increase in the downtown area increases.
He said lastly they wanted to be a good neighbor and wanted to look again at the percent changes between 2005 and 2006 with their neighborhood units. He said he could not break them down any smaller than what the police reported. He said they had about a 29% increase in the number of cases in the report, an increase in downtown was 54%, 6% of what they contributed to that overall increase. The Oread Neighborhood had a 2% increase in crime and from 6th Street to 9th Street showed a very high increase, which could be because there was a mixture of residential, commercial and public buildings in that area. He said a neighborhood to the south and west and encroached upon campus had a 15% increase. He said his point was it did not appear to him exactly how much Lawrence Community Shelter had contributed to the rise in crime in the neighborhood, but certainly a number of the neighborhoods were well below the Lawrence average of the 33% increase and again the increase downtown was about 54%, if all 20 of their cases were a part of that 363, it was still only 6%. He said his point was that LCS did not probably have the overall impact on crime that might be suggested by some of the other people in the room. He said he tried to do analysis as scientifically and unbiased as he could and give what he saw as facts into that report.
David Lewis, Downtown business owner, spoke in support of the LCS and urged the Commission to approve the three year SUP. He said he was a downtown business owner and lived about a block away from the Salvation Army so he had a little bit of experience of living and working around the homeless. He said 10 years ago, the situation was worse because there were a lot of homeless people sleeping on roofs and other different places and in that respect, things had really improved. He said he was a supporter of the shelter and it was difficult work. He said like Henderson said, it was not an ideal location, but the City needed to support the Shelter. He said the Shelter needed space and it was time for them to come off of probation. He said the people who work at the Shelter were dedicated and as a business owner, he supported the LCS for the three year SUP.
Brandy Sutton encouraged the Commission to give the LCS a one year Special Use Permit. She said she did not think anyone was there to discount what LCS did because she thought the Shelter’s intent was good, but they were discussing a special use permit and the key word being “special.” She asked if LCS was providing a benefit to which this neighborhood should be burdened with. She said she was driving by the LCS and there was a group of people in the alley way and two police officers, and that was the picture she saw every day. She said the statistics could be played with any way they wanted, but 944 Kentucky was one address that had 6% of the total calls for downtown Lawrence which was atrocious. She said when they were before the Commission last year, they could play a video and people would have pretty much the same comments. She said the shelter needed to do something to get the situation under control and to have some sort of actions and consequences. She said she knew Henderson said they had actions and consequences, but when she reviewed the call logs, the police logs that LCS kept, there was no way to tell if the people were suspended from the LCS facilities, were they banned from the property and there was no way of tracking or telling this. She said she knew the Shelter wanted a three year review, but if that was done there was no mechanism for which this could be brought back up to the City Commission by the neighbors or other concerns, it had to be brought through either the planning staff to the City Commission to go ahead and go back through a review process. She said the annual reports that were required by a three year extension were meaningless and was just more paperwork. She said they had to put some type of accountability and structure in this. She said right now LCS worked on an output based model and they needed to work toward an outcome based model. She said those people need to be making progress and needed help. She said they could only help those who wanted to be helped and could only help those who wanted to help themselves. There was a certain percentage that wanted to use drugs and alcohol. She knew she called almost weekly the police department for people using drugs between her building and the Trinity Church. She said it was a regular site to see someone over there shooting up or smoking illegal drugs. She said she saw the same group of people there every day, but she did not know what those people were doing, but they were hanging in the alleyway. She said one of the issues addressed last year was the Shelter was to use their best efforts to control those type of extraneous effects and keep people on the LCS property, that was the whole purpose of putting that structure in the back was to encourage people to stay on the property and stop hanging out in the alleys and blocking the alleyways. She said she had not seen a change and saw the same number of people hanging out in the alleyway as a year ago. She said something needed to be done to move forward and give the neighbors some type of impetuous to want LCS as a neighbor. They knew that LCS did not have adequate facilities, but honestly who would want them in their neighborhood if they could not be a good neighbor in the facility the Shelter was at now.
She said they looked at the cost to taxpayers and building a new shelter would be expensive, it was a tax on the citizens. She said they were already being taxed by the number of police calls to that location. She said every time a patrol car was over at the Shelter dealing with situations at the LCS that was one less officer this City had on its streets dealing with the population at large. She asked the City Commission to only grant the Shelter a one year renewal and ask the Shelter to become accountable as neighbor’s and take action to curb the effects on the surrounding neighborhood and move toward an outcome based model so the Shelter could find a facility to expand into and a neighborhood to which the Shelter would be welcomed.
Marilyn Roy, spoke in support of the LCS and staff and urged the approval of the SUP for as long as possible. She said she was listening to every thing that had been discussed and only came down to support Henderson and the LCS staff and to plead with the City Commission to give the Shelter an extension on their special use permit. She said she wholeheartedly backed Sweet comments.
She said secondly she applauded Herman for talking about management of social pain because that was the problem. She said it made her angry to hear so much judgment and if a person had never been homeless that person could not know what it was really like. She said the reason why they had so many people bursting from the seams of the current Shelter was because enough was not being done. She said if really wanting to commit to solving the problem, the community needed to come together, establish a community trust, build the building, provide the facilities, and get all those folks help. The reason why people shoot up drugs in the alley was because Lawrence did not have a drug rehabilitation center and did not have a good place at the local hospital for people with those types of problems to go. She said DCCCA was great, but that center was too far away.
She said there were more than 400 or more homeless people in this community and the Shelter’s staff took care of approximately 60 people a day which was 1/6 of the homeless population. She said the people doing the work were doing the best they could with what they had and the thing they kept dancing around was money to build this building and help the folks. She said she thought the business community could come together with the City because if the business community wanted to help the homeless get off the street, then a community fund should be established so the building could be built and help the homeless out.
Scott Shreders said he was present on behalf of Loring Henderson, the Lawrence Community Shelter, and numerous homeless individuals in the City. He said in his completion of Eagle Scout’s, two years ago, he worked with the Lawrence Community Shelter building benches and painting parts of the building’s exterior. Beyond getting his award from working at the Shelter, he gained many invaluable life experiences and met many wonderful people. He said he learned the City’s homeless population comprised some of the most upbeat, caring and appreciative individuals one might find and additionally he met Loring Henderson. He said Henderson was a compassionate man who worked exceptionally hard to help those in the society who were in most need of help. Most of all, he learned the homeless population found it exceptionally hard to live and eventually get back on their feet without numerous hours of aid and volunteer work the many volunteers and Henderson put in at the Shelter. He said he was strongly in favor of the three year time frame to allow Henderson and his volunteers to continue the crusade to help benefit the less fortunate individuals in this society.
Rhonda Miller said she supported the three year SUP. She said she was the mother of the Eagle Scout so she had the chance to meet Loring and become involved with the Community Shelter basically the same time her son did. She said since then, she had the opportunity to volunteer, cook meals at home, and take meals in a couple of different times through the month. She said she had been at the Shelter at noon, at 8:30 p.m. at night and left as late as 10 p.m. and the two year period that she had come and gone, she at one point saw a huge discussion on theology which she would have had more time to sit and take part in, but it was the scariest experience she had coming and going. Those people were always very excited to see the volunteers and they helped the volunteers carry items in from their cars. She said she could not begin to tell how many times someone had thanked them profusely, but also said this was the only meal they were going to have today.
Carol Pilant spoke in support of the three year SUP. She said the first thing she wanted to address was the protective structure, which was mighty ugly, but it served a wonderful purpose in the back of the building and addressed concerns of the neighbors and kept the people, the homeless guests to be out of the rain, out of the sun in the summer and kept the front streets much clearer. She said that structure was visible from only one direction which was the parking lot.
She said regarding historic requirements, she replaced a roof on her home and knew it was difficult to get approval of any kind of difference. She said to get an inch pitch on the roof of her home she had to go to Topeka to the Historic Preservation Office. She said it was ridiculous and did not think it was viable possibility, and the Shelter did not have the money.
She said the idea of keeping people from the front of the building was very critical. Also, regarding homeless people in the alleys, she Sutton, as being a lawyer would know the U.S. Constitution would not allow Lawrence Community Shelter to keep their guests in the shelter against their will. She said the fact the homeless were in the alley that was not the Shelter’s issue in her opinion. She said if those people were shooting up and smoking illegal drugs, then the police needed to be called.
She said one of the neighbors mentioned that safety in the community was an important part of being a good neighbor. She said saying the shelter had not taken appropriate measures to address safety or the sense of community in that neighborhood was in her experience not true. She said they kept hearing about a passage way by a home or by apartments and the owner had done nothing to even put up a sign that it was private property and no trespassing. She said she walked down the street and it looked like an inviting place and a place to pass through. She said a sign would address the issue easily.
She said food came to the shelter at 8:30 every night and there were numerous people in town bringing food all the time in the dark to the Shelter and felt protected. She said it was false to say that there was a sense of insecurity. She said it was not a dangerous place to be at night.
Kami Day spoke in support of the three year SUP. She said she volunteered at the Shelter and had done that for a few years. She had thoroughly enjoyed being in the company of the guests and dedicated staff and never felt in any danger. She said the guests who stayed there were human beings and the time she spent at the Shelter, she had come to see the only difference between her and those guest was they had not been as lucky as she had been in her life.
She said if there was problem at the Shelter it was because the facility was not adequate. If anyone had been in the Shelter, the people slept on the floor, the quarters were very close and had no place to keep their few belongings. She said part of the reason that the awning outside was so important was because there was no space outside and they had to get outside and move around a bit.
She said she did not think the City should look at expanding the library or widening one more road until the money was found to build a shelter or find adequate space to renovate for a shelter so that there was adequate space for the homeless population and she said this City could not be called a good community until it was done.
Bill Gollier, Bishop Seabury Academy Student Senate Advisor, spoke in support of the three year SUP. He said the fact the SUP needed to be approved for three years he thought went without saying. The Planning Commission already approved it by a wide majority, he was at that meeting and the Planning Commission was in support of the SUP.
He said this issue dealt with funding and community issues and if the City was able to build an $8 million water treatment plant at the Wakarusa River so they could build more houses across the Wakarusa and if the City could build an ice skating rink, he thought there was no doubt they could come together as a community to build a proper shelter with proper facilities, proper medical help, proper medical care so the clients could be well taken care of. He said Henderson’s work and staff’s work was beyond recognition. He said Henderson needed the City’s help in two ways:
1. Approve the three years so the Shelter could make a plan; and
2. It was the responsibility of the City Commission to bring the community together to help with this issue.
Christine Caffey, Junior, Bishop Seabury Academy, said she was speaking in support of the three year SUP. She said she had been working at LCS picking up trash and realized this was a college town and all the trash was not made by the homeless community. She said the Shelter was making an effort to work with the community and not just sitting back and let things happen.
Julia Davidson, Sophomore, Bishop Seabury Academy, spoke in support of the three year SUP. She said the LCS was going to have disgruntled neighbors no matter where they went; even if they moved to the middle of no where, someone would call about a problem with the shelter. She said she thought cutting the Shelter back to a one year permit was setting them up for failure. She asked if it was possible to achieve all things necessary to procure a building in just one year. She said renewing the three year permit would give them adequate time to find a new building or update the current building.
James Dunn, spoke in support of the three year SUP. He said the awning protected the participants of the program and the fence helped to enclose the area around the awnings and felt that was important. He said in visiting with the people that were his neighbors, he came to realize that people could find themselves in this kind of a situation easily with having a lot of problems and things happen in life and empathized with the people that participated at the Shelter.
It was moved by Amyx, seconded by Highberger to close the public hearing. Motion carried unanimously.
Commissioner Highberger said this was a difficult issue. He said he thought it was very clear, from public comment and from what he had seen with the people who worked at the Shelter, that those people worked very hard and did good work and made a great difference in the lives of many, many people. He said the City Commission needed to allow the Shelter to continue. He said he understood the frustration because he lived three blocks from the facility, but he was not sure he had much more difficulty with college kids than homeless people. He said a solution needed to be found which he had stated for the last three months. He said even though this was going to be difficult budget year, he thought the City Commission needed to step up this year and make a commitment for a permanent facility. He said he supported a three year SUP as recommended by the Planning Commission.
Commissioner Chestnut said concerning the draft ordinance for the 3 year Special Use Permit, there were not a lot of milestones set out in the ordinance. He said if they wanted to look at an alternate facility at some point, it should be discussed right now in order for to have that facility in a two or three year period. He said the City Commission needed to understand was that would encompass in a total project, but if it was private/public sharing of some type, what the expectations were going to be as far as commitment from the City. He said he would like to support the three year ordinance, but he would like to see a lot more of the milestones because they were talking about a 36 month period and what would be the expectations as far as after 12 months they would have site selection alternatives, moving in the direction of fundraising and a capital plan, and all the things that were going to be important to bring this together. He said that was what he did not see in this ordinance. He said he wanted to support a three year plan because he did agree the Shelter needed time to make this thing happen, but he shared some of the frustration he was hearing from the neighborhood not so much that they were not in total support of what LCS was doing and the people they were serving, but seeing that plan.
Commissioner Chestnut asked Henderson if there would be a fairly comprehensive plan or what would the Commission expect to see.
Henderson it would be premature to say too much, but it was a plan that talked about implementing the Mayor’s Task Force Report, categories of housing, going from emergency to permanent and public discussions. He said what this group saw under the different categories as characteristics, services, and other features, did not yet talk about a facility. He said the facility was more up to the agency, the way it was designed and had to be worked out with Salvation Army, but it would be up to the agency to talk about the specifics of a building.
He said he appreciated and would be in accord with milestones. He thought the Shelter would not be out there doing some process independent even if there were no money. He said checking in or reporting sounded appropriate in some way.
Commissioner Chestnut said the ordinance as drafted, he would like to see the milestones defined now versus an on going basis because he thought planning was a better part of execution and that was how they got things done. He said he wanted to support what the LCS was doing and thought it was obviously a big need in the community, but he thought the Shelter needed to put pencil to paper a little bit more as far as some more quantifiable milestones during a 36 month period.
Commissioner Dever said he thought the way they could handle those milestones was by making staff and the Commissioners more accountable for discussing it on a more regular basis and making it a priority. He said it would be very difficult to draft that language and put it in the ordinance, but thought if the City Commission were monitoring the situation amongst themselves and staff reminding them to do so, that was one way to possibly institute that kind of monitoring and milestones that might be required.
Mayor Hack said during budget conversations suggested by Commissioner Highberger, was an appropriate time. She said she believed they were waiting on that report from the task force. She said she understood the concerns and brought that up yesterday morning of placing benchmarks along the way and there were some issues of public disclosure of the potential of locations that sent people into a tizzy on all sides of things that they could not throw out and see what happened. She said they were fortunate to have people who were extremely concerned about individuals in the community and did complement themselves on being a caring and compassionate community, but at the same time this was an accountable community. She said she would support the three year SUP.
Commissioner Amyx said in the staff report, one of the staff findings asked a question about the appropriateness to place a time limit on the period of time the proposed use was to be allowed by special use permit, and if so, what period of time. He said staff made a pretty good argument about a one year time frame for the permit. He said when the City Commission looked at the current budget there were monies in the budget. He said between CDBG and from outside agency requests, the Shelter was currently receiving about $70,000. He said with the other agency being Salvation Army, he thought received a similar amount of money and thought that there were monies inside the budget. He said one of the things the City Commission asked the Community Commission on Homelessness last year was to become involved with making a recommendation for requests of monies inside the City’s budget that dealt with homeless populations. He said if the City Commission were to consider a one year time frame, he suggested looking at the monies available. He said if they would be looking at making up grades or changes to the location, if they tied themselves into a three year commitment or program to that location, he thought it would be hard to move it to another location even with the City Commission’s help.
Moved by Highberger, seconded by Chestnut, to place on first reading Ordinance No. 8100, a three year special use permit (SUP-01-02-07) for the Lawrence Community Shelter. Aye: Chestnut, Dever, Hack, and Highberger. Nay: Amyx. Motion carried.
Commissioner Highberger said he would be reluctant to overturn the Historic Resources Commission’s decision. He said it was a 3-2 vote for a temporary structure and was provided by the neighborhood. He said he would grant the UPR for the structure and the fence.
Lynn Zollner said under that definition it discussed technical and economic issues. They could look toward the temporary usage of that shelter and the economic issues involved as not removing it would not be feasible and prudent.
Mayor Amyx said the City Commission required it to be put on their vote a year ago as part of the site plan.
Zollner said she thought it came out of that discussion of some way to look for shelter so that the population would not be on the front at all times. She said she thought staff’s only concern was the lack of the building permit and the inspection by Neighborhood Resources to make sure it was installed properly.
Commissioner Hack asked if the City Commission could ask for that inspection because she would hate for something to happen in that facility. She said if the inspection was part of their agreement, and the Shelter would agree to have Neighborhood Resources perform an inspection was a wise decision.
Zollner said part of that planning to minimize harm could be that the Shelter seeks volunteers in the future to look at alternatives of more compliant structures. She said they could add that suggestion with the City Commission’s decision.
Mayor Hack said she thought that it was wise to add that suggestion and perhaps ask Henderson to work with Zollner on what some of the alternatives might be to bring it up to some type of attractive structure.
Corliss said the approval also included the building inspection of the facility that would be inspected without building permit fee. He said it was not like saying staff was not going to do an inspection, staff just did not conduct an inspection unless there was process, but the process was not followed.
Moved by Highberger, seconded by Amyx, to approve DR-01-06-07 subject to revised conditions (removing the HRC condition of approval for the removal of the noncompliant fence and carport) and, based upon a finding that there is no feasible and prudent alternative to the existing fence and carport due to the technical issues of the project, a temporary structure, and economic issues, also determined that to include all possible planning to minimize harm to the listed properties, the LCS shall apply for a building permit for the carport (including waiving the building permit fee) to ensure that the structure is properly installed, and that the LCS continue to work with volunteers, donors, and planning staff to identify an appropriate replacement structure that will meet the needs and financial constraints of the LCS while meeting the standards and guidelines for compatible structures within a historic district. Motion carried unanimously. (27)