09-28-09 Common Council Meeting Agenda & Packet

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Area Board of Zoning Appeals -September 2, 2009 Lerman on Ridgedale Road, Bycraft on Garland Road, Hillman on Garland Circle, Lerman on Garland Circle, Wisniewslci on Garland Circle, and Ballard and I don't have a address on that one. So we have 15 letters in opposition. At this time I would like to give Mr. Danch an opportunity for rebuttal. REBUTTAL: MR. DANCH: I'm going to go ahead and rebut a couple of things and then I'd like Lashon to handle a little bit more on the detail of the Hope House Organization. She can answer some questions on that. As was mentioned, I think one of the difficulties that we had here was we requested a tabling of this particular petition from the time we first submitted it. The reason for that particular tabling of the petition was time to work out with the Building Department staff and the staff attorney the actual designation of a group home, group residence and the way that it had been interrupted with City of South Bend zoning ordinance. We created a petition the first time that explained that we thought was acceptable for a group home was to have on site visitation by therapists and or counselors to the site. We found out after meeting with the staff attorney and with Building Department staff is that the interpretation under the ordinance that is not allowed as a group home. We stopped the process completely, we revised our petition and what is before the Board today is that revised petition for strictly a group home. We mentioned that the conditions that we've applied to the our request for the Special Exception that the girls will only be 10 - 18 years old. That is a condition that will be approved by the City Council assuming and also depending on.what happens here with the Board of Zoning Appeals. That is a condition that would go with this particular home. There would be no on site therapy secessions. There is no on site counseling. As Lashon had mentioned the requirement by the State is that they do have to make a visitation to the site to make sure everything is happening. It is not true as explained by the remonstrators that somehow there is going to be nine or ten people going to this particular site that there's going to be traffic congestion problems at this particular house. I think we've explained that very well that there's only going to be two vehicles at this particular location. That if Lashon or one of the Board members happen to make a site visitation that can be done. That is not something that is done every single day for several hours. It's something that is requested by the State for their reporting. 1 think the parking issue has been taken care of by what I've just explained. There's not going to be nine or ten people at this particular site, just the house parents. The other thing was the one about property values. It's nice to have someone stand up here and explain that's there's going to be a decrease in property values based on some requirement that they've told real estate people. I've also taken a look at studies that were done for group homes, there are several types of group homes depending on the type that is done it can have an effect on property values. The group homes range anywhere from disabilities to alcoholics to drug addict homes and depending on which ones you throw into the mix on something like that, that can have a tremendous effect on the type of property values on where those particular homes are located. What we said is this is for girls from 10 to 18 years old. Even some of the remonstrators had mentioned that there are homes over on York or Woodmont. I didn't hear anything that those particular homes were strictly for girls or within in a particular range so I don't know what those particular group homes arc for. And I think it is really outside of the range to throw in a rehabilitation or an assisted living facility that has 198 beds and try to compare that to a home that's going to have eight girls in that range in age from 10 to 18 that are strictly trying to find a stable environment. So I would hope that the Board would take a look at what we had presented. The limited amount of people that would be at this home, which is basically two house parents and eight girls and that's what we would ask for your approval or favorable recommendation to council. And I'll let Lashon go ahead and answer the questions about the organization. Thank you. 27