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Area Board of Zoning Appeals -September 2, 2009 <br />MR. DANCH: That's exactly it. <br />MR. VELLEMAN: And you said that the girls will be removed from a poor home situation. They could not <br />have problems themselves that need to be worked through, put it's possible? <br />MR. DANCH: The way that Hope House organization and Lashon is setting up this particular group home, <br />they're going to be able to screen those particular girls that would come to this house so that they can <br />determine whether the girls would be acceptable for this group home. There are other types of group homes, <br />other types of programs where girls with different kind of problems, maybe drug abuse or something like that, <br />they would go to those type of facilities. That's not this particular one. They want to be able to say who can <br />actually come to this group home. And then that gives them the ability to help those girls. <br />MR. URBANSKI: Area Plan anymore comments? <br />MS. NAYDER: First of all our comments are based on from a planning background and from what we can <br />tell as presented this fits the definition for group home as it is defined within the zoning ordinance. Also we <br />are basing our decision on those four criteria above also from the zoning ordinance. <br />MR. URBANSKI: Before I open this up for public, I want you to understand that this Board is to make a <br />recommendation to the City of South Bend Common Council. So what we decide is a recommendation. Our <br />recommendation can either be, send it with a favorable recommendation, send it with an unfavorable <br />recommendation, or send it with no recommendation. Just so that you understand that this is not the final <br />point on this. The South Bend City Council makes the final decision upon this. At this time I would like to <br />open up the public portion. <br />IN FAVOR <br />MR. ERIK HIKES: I am the president of Hope House organization and I live at 4418 S. King Drive, Chicago, <br />Illinois, 60653. Before we get started let me have my partner, Lashon Gurrola correct some of the points that <br />were asked earlier to council that were incorrect as far as would we be on site, the number of hours that we <br />work and so on and so forth. <br />MS. LASHON GURROLA: 835 Southeast Ave., Oak Park, Illinois. And please let the record show I have <br />separate residence here at 144 W. Pokagon Street, South Bend, Indiana. First of all I would like the Board to <br />know how this project came to be here for this group home. I basically did a needs assessment in the county, <br />in St. Joe County. And based on information and data submitted from LaCasa Department of Child Services <br />and other such groups such as Juvenile Justice Department, they indicated a strong need for this program. In <br />the package that was just distributed you'll see letters from LaCasa program, Women's Care Center, Juvenile <br />Justice and a couple of other county governmental agencies just indicating that there is a need in the county. <br />When we were looking for support for this project, as you stated sir a lot of the addresses may not be directly <br />in that Ridgedale area, but because this facility that services girls from the county we felt that it was very <br />important to get the, you know, support of general in the county. So a lot of these supporters are not right <br />there in that little cul-de-sac circle. In addition we have applied to Indiana State for this application and we <br />did put the application on hold pending the final approval for the Special Use. Prior to putting it on hold we <br />12 <br />