Thread by @mlcarmel

After three lengthy public hearings, Boise Planning & Zoning will be deliberating on whether or not to grant Interfaith Sanctuary a conditional use permit to move to State Street.

I will be tweeting, but it can be difficult to keep up with complex deliberations so bear with me!

Keep in mind though, this is not the end of this fight. We still have a long way to go.

No matter what happens tonight, it will most certainly be appealed to #CityCouncilTuesday for more hearings and another decision. From there, I'm wagering it ends up in court.

Commissioner Schaeffer is recusing himself and will not be voting.

I'm not sure why....If anybody knows feel free to chime in!

Gillispie kicked things off by saying the project meets the definition of compatibility because there are similar uses in the neighborhood and it is an allowed use. That is NOT the same as adverse impacts, which will be discussed later.

Gillispie is now talking about the issue of police impacts. He said the move would result in a shift in police and fire impacts after listening to expert testimony, not an undue burden after listening to testimony. Meredith Stead agreed.

Chris Danley disagrees.

"I keep going back to the CEPTED report. In 15 years of private practice, in the 4 years of being on this commission, I have never seen language as stark as this."

I talked about that report here:

boisedev.com/news/2021/04/2…

Gillispie: "I share Danley's concern. I guess the problem we have is that we've got this earlier report, we know some things about it and we have the police chief's testimony where he did not repeat those points."

Blanchard: "(BPD and BFD) essentially gave us non testimony as Danley has stated. They got up and said "we'll deal with it." If you got up there and said that to a board of directors, you wouldn't have a lot of confidence. I wouldn't, and I don't."

Mohr: Maybe the problem here isn't that we don't have (the security plan), but it's not well defined. Maybe part of the conversation is figuring out what we want from the security plan and those definitions can be worked out by the experts based on our list of adverse impacts

Stead agrees.

Gillispie is suggesting they cap the occupancy at 250 people not including cribs and not allow for overflow guests at the shelter. If in the future things are going well, IFS can come back and ask the over flow be put back in.

"That's one example of a condition change I noted"

Blanchard is suggesting that instead of sitting down to try and put so many conditions on the project to get the project passed, he suggested they just vote up or down on it and let everyone speak on it before it goes to council in an appeal.

Gillispie said he can't currently approve the project with the conditions the city has suggested. He is wanting to edit it and add ongoing mitigation measures.

Mooney said IFS will likely do whatever P&Z asks to get the project done. Mohr added that it is P&Z's responsibility to apply conditions and make something that works.

Danley: "At the end of the day, we had 400ish letters to the city asking us to deny this application and another at least 100 testify to do the same. When I heard and read all the arguments, to me so much of them boiled down to the one issue. It all came down to security"

Commissioners are moving down the bullet points of criteria the project has to meet one at a time.

Mohr said the biggest thing for her is to ensuring the day shelter is instituted immediately upon opening so all of the programs will be available immediately.

Gillispie said he is comfortable with the 26 or 27 parking spaces Interfaith Sanctuary is proposing. This is fewer than what Veterans Park NA wanted.

Blanchard is arguing that the facility is not big enough because it has a lot of elements that are like a medical care facility, which means it needs to be bigger.

Stead argued back and said Boise should use its own code and specifications, not other city codes.

Mooney said he was very impressed with the neighborhood association's research into the issue of homeless shelters. He said they brought a lot of compassion to the issue and sought to educate Interfaith Sanctuary.

Now we're going to talk about the big topic: Adverse impacts from the project.

Gillespie: "We heard two kinds of testimony. The first was conjectural. In other words, it wasn't specific to a person and the what of it impact was everything from serious violent crime to loitering and littering and the when was anytime and the where was over a huge space"

Gillespie: "If we think of trying to connect that testimony to this application, I use the who, what, when where. What's the nexus? And a lot of it was just no clear nexus to me. That's block one. I'm not that worried about block one."

What he IS worried about though is police and fire calls.

Gillespie: All of the fire and police call data was from the applicants existing site, not this site. It's not normal to apply a developers other site and apply data to another site."

Gillespie: "We have to be pretty sure there is a good analogy that we'll see similar behavior at the new site from the old one. The problem for me is trying to understand how much should be infer from police and ems data from one site to another site."

Stead: "That's tricky to do right now because it's a different location with other shelter homes nearby that won't be sharing the same space. It's really hard to say this overflow or whathaveyou is a product of IFS because it might have been this, or it might have been this"

Blanchard said the city frequently infers how many calls would come from different types of sites when developing impact fees, like grocery stores and other types of uses.

Mohr pointed out that this shelter move is not the same as relocating an Albertsons from one place to another.

Danley: "This does get into some of the social commentary that we heard a bit that being homeless is akin to being problematic. That's not the case But, we do know there is a small contingent of folks that are going to be part of what our police department has clearly stated."

Danley: "I can't say the CEPTED report is going to be 100% accurate, but if it's 50% accurate we'll have some issues."

Mooney: We're asked to predict the future and rely on the expert testimony of Chief Lee and that is difficult to do without those detailed conditions Danley is talking about. We're basically asked to trust the experts at the risk of our neighbors in VPNA and that's a tough one.

Mohr is talking about how overflow guests could cause adverse impacts to the neighborhood because they could be turned away and then be far from downtown. She also noted that IFS should use durable materials to prevent graffiti.

There are so many different concerns, thoughts and conflicted feelings flying around at this meeting it's making my head spin a little bit.

It is obvious that the commissioners are taking this decision very seriously. We'll see how they vote...

Mooney brought up the question the neighbors brought up about how the parcel has a small piece of it zoned residential.

Gillespie said the city staff's perspective is that the commercial zone can apply to the whole thing and he agrees with that.

Mohr is once again talking about overflow allowed during cold weather and hot summer.

Stead noted that the shelter does use their shuttle to move people back and forth to other shelters, but people can refuse a ride or there might not be additional beds.

Gillespie would like to eliminate all overflow and cap occupancy at 205. Stead agreed.

"I think asking the neighborhood to bear that uncertainty, to me I just prefer not to have any overflow for the initial period."

We're on a quick break!

Gillespie is suggesting his list of conditions.

-Get rid of the overflow
-Make the quiet time 8 p.m. not 9 p.m.
-Require a yearly neighborhood meeting about the shelter's security and performance
-Require security plan must be approved by Planning Director before occupancy

But........he's not sure this will work. He wants to require IFS to produce a lengthy annual report on performance, security and how it complies with the security plan.

But.....................he acknowledges this would be outside the city's purview to require and the city might not have the expertise to evaluate.

"I tried my best to condition this to eliminate the adverse impact, but I couldn't do it. I would like to hear anyone's best shot."

Stead suggests the Mayor's Office could evaluate the report because they have employees working on homelessness and partnerships with nonprofits. Gillespie says he's not sure that would would either.

Gillespie noted that the city can put a time limit on a permit, but.....what happens if the permit expires and IFS just spent millions on the new facility?

"If we time limit the permit, who knows about their financing? Time stamping it is it's tantamount to a denial"

Gillespie: "It's probably more wise to develop a security plan the commission has faith in"

Gillespie is making a motion to deny the project for having too much adverse impacts. Danley seconded.

Gillespie: I just can't figure out how to get conditions in that mitigate the adverse impact to that neighborhood. I think the adverse impact was clearly demonstrated in the current level of police and fire calls in the CEPTED report as well as the current EMS and police data.

Blanchard agrees.

"The location is not compatible with the other uses in the neighborhood...I think the proposed use will place an undue burden on the public facilities in the area, specifically Fire Station 5 and the unstaffed Willow Lane facility."

Blanchard: "What's happened throughout the valley is everyone has exported their homelessness to Boise. There needs to be a lot more of a solution than IFS going this alone and there's not much anyone here can do about that."

Danley:

"This isn't something I want to do. It drives me nuts that this state doesn't help out in this issue more than it does. We don't fund the housing trust fund. The applicant is not a person trying to ruin any part of the city. It kills me this is where we are."

Danley: "A lot of folks wrote us and a lot of folks came and spoke to us. I know some things that were said that maybe shouldn't have been with regard to the folks who might have been homeless, but I regret to hear that the neighborhood is nothing but NIMBYs."

Danley: "We just don't have enough information. I have tried as best I can to try and get us there and I was disappointed in some of the responses."

Mooney is also voting it down.

"This is a compatible use and the site is large enough and there is no undue burden, but I humbly disagree that the shelter won't adversely impact the property in the vicinity."

Mooney: "I'd really like to defer to the experts and figure this out and I regret that is going to put people on the street a bit longer and won't solve the problem. The applicant has been very accommodating so far and I think they would support conditions to make this work."

Mohr: "It's a tough position to be in. It's a tough format to add conditions and discuss. With the lack of conditions and lack of adequate conditions, I'm looking at my notes and my concerns are more densely worded than my positive side."

Mohr: "It's hard to condition here, but there clearly are some conditions and that CEPTED report has some reactive measures that can be used in the future based on real data that could help create some of these impacts based on public testimony we now know."

Stead is voting for the project, saying she hasn't given up on conditions yet. She said there should be constructive criticism.

Gillespie: "I think the record is clear what kind of security and operations plan they might do and what they might contain."

BREAKING: Planning & Zoning Commission voted 5-1 to deny Interfaith Sanctuary's application to move to State Street.

Commission President Meredith Stead was the lone vote against denial.