09-28-09 Common Council Meeting Agenda & Packet

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Area Board of Zoning Appeals -September 2, 2009 teenage girls to because they have, because they don't have enough girls group homes to handle the population right now. So this would be servicing that need. MR. URBANSKI: Anyone else wishing to speak in favor of or asking questions of, please come forward. MS. SHERRY CODDEL: I live at 116 Westward Ho, it's in North Lake, Illinois. Lashon and I have been talking and I asked her if I could come today. I was an abused child. I ended up in a group home. I then moved to foster care. It would be in my eyes a great benefit for anybody that age that can get that kind of help because I was physically and sexual abused as a child. There's too many times that kids are overlooked and they are put into institutions and I was in one. I was fortunate to have a counselor that was able to help me realize that there is a lot of good out there and helped to know where to find it. It also helped me when I wanted to find a foster home when I was a teenager. It's really hard to find a foster home for a teenager. Lot of people don't want to deal with them because they come with a lot of baggage. Through my foster mother and foster father they helped me continue to grown because I did not want as a mother to become the same as what my stepmother was to me. And fortunately my kids were never abused. There's a lot of times where children don't find that light at the end of the tunnel and they turn out the way they are brought up by their peers. And it's my belief that with Lashon's program will be a great benefit to those 8 kids that really need the help. And that's why I came today. I also work with her at Elmhurst Hospital. I've been there 22 years. Lashon has been there 10. In that time you get to know a lot about a person. We've also been through a recent program through work where we shared a lot of personal things about each other and one of them was my experience as a kid. She shared with me her passion to do this for other children, so that's why I'm here to support her, to support the cause. To support kids that are like me that don't deserve to grow up like that. They don't deserve it one bit. They need our help. They need your help to try and give them a good future. To help them transition from the bad to what's good in the world because I didn't know anything good until I was in a group home for a little while and then I transition to foster care because I became a ward of the State of Illinois at the age of 15. So I was abused from the time I was 7 until the time I was 15 so I didn't know anything else but that. REV. CARL TAYLOR: I pastor the church on the southeast side of South Bend, 137 E. Indiana Ave. Congregation of 700. I'm in support of the home because one, it allows young ladies to see the world from a different lens for a chance. To purchase a home in that neighborhood, which is a lovely neighborhood, and I can understand the neighbors concerns but what the happens is the neighbors as well as the residents will allow girls to see that they can set goals and reach them and allows them to leave from outside an environments that would trap them forever. What this homeowner is trying to do is really trying to enhance kids and give them better structure, to give them direction and to let them see that they can live in neighborhoods and be successful everyday in life. So that's my support as a pastor. I talk with young ladies always that have walked through this particular phase and journey in life and they struggled because at a certain age they were just cast out and so then ended up living on the streets and then they end up living at maybe the Women's Y and they struggled with drugs but in this particular setting she's going to capture a young lady to give her a foundation so that they cannot make a bad decisions. And if they screen them the way they say their going to screen them and with the residents in that particular neighborhood kids can go to school and become great just by applying the basic principles in their life. 19