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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Committees - Planning and Economic Development Committee - 08/27/1990 KENT PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES August 27, 1990 The meeting of the Kent Planning Commission was called to order by Chair Martinez at 7 : 30 p.m. August 27, 1990 in the Kent City Hall, City Council Chambers. PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS PRESENT: Linda Martinez, Chair Tracy Faust, Vice Chair Frank Chopp Coleen Miller Raymond Ward PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS ABSENT: Elmira Forner, excused Greg Greenstreet, absent Willie Gregory, absent PLANNING STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT: James P. Harris, Planning Director Fred Satterstrom, Planning Manager Lauri Anderson, Senior Planner Janet Shull, Planner Lois Ricketts, Recording Secretary KENT CITY STAFF: Carolyn Lake, Assistant City Attorney APPROVAL OF JULY 23 , 1990 PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES Commissioner Faust MOVED that the minutes of the July 23 , 1990 meeting be approved as presented. Commissioner Miller SECONDED the motion. Motion carried. GROUP HOMES - ZCA 90-2 (Verbatim Minutes) Chair Martinez: I would like to reopen the public hearing. Is there (unclear) from staff. Janet Shull: This is Janet Shull of the Planning Department. Good evening. What I 'd like to do is go over three or four things tonight. The first thing is just to give everyone here an overview of what has happened to date, and, basically, if you want to follow along, there is a packet you have in front of you that, basically, Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 I will be following along. You could practically read along with me. I won't be totally reading it, but it goes in that order and I ' ll be talking about what has happened to date, the Planning Commission's actions to date, some new information that the Planning commission has in front of them tonight that was also . . . most of it you looked at last week in your workshop. And there are a few additional items that you had requested of us for tonight. And the third thing is going over what is left to act on this evening. So that is the order of my presentation. The last hearing on this item, that is the Group Homes report recommendations of the Group Homes Committee, the last hearing on this was two months ago. It took place on June 25th. That evening the Planning Commission made four recommendations or four actions on that report. The first one was to modify the current definition of family in the zoning code. Basically what that would do would put limits on the number of unrelated individuals in a family. It does other things as well, but that is the primary difference between what we have now in the zoning code and what has been recommended to date. The second item is to amend the zoning code to add definitions of Class I, II and III group homes. The third item being adding a siting matrix that would go along with those defined three classes of group homes. So for each class the matrix will specify whether that class of group homes is permitted, or conditional or not permitted at all. The Planning Commission did modify that matrix, and the modified matrix is contained in the packet that you have this evening. And basically those modifications were to make Class II group homes conditional in all cases where the committee had recommended in some cases Class II be permitted in certain zones. The Planning Commission has modified that so that in all cases they will now be conditional. And the fourth action taken was to adopt separation and dispersion requirements which would apply only to Class II and III group homes. And, again, there was a recommended modification that would add to the list of sensitive uses, parks and playgrounds. So the separation requirements would relate to those sensitive land uses and that Class II and III group homes would need to be at least 1, 000 feet from those listed sensitive land uses. And in the dispersion requirements being 600 feet, that any two group homes that are Class II or III must be at least 600 feet from one another. So, those four items have been acted upon by the Planning Commission. Tonight we are going to be looking at some other items that the Planning Commission directed staff to research in these last two months, and we've gone over these in workshop last week and so I ' ll briefly touch on what was presented last time. Essentially, what those items were that we've been looking at the last couple of months did come out of the group home report. They were recommended for further study of staff. But the Group Homes Committee themselves did not develop these items. They felt it was 2 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 beyond their capability as an advisory committee, but they felt strongly about these items. The first one of those was to develop a licensing program for Class II and III group homes. The second was in conjunction to that to develop a monitoring program for Class II and III group homes. And then also to develop specific criteria that would be utilized for the conditional use permitting process of Class II and III group homes. The committee felt that our current list of eight criteria in the zoning code was not . . . maybe not enough and we needed to look at whether we need additional criteria to apply just to the Class II and III group homes. So these items we have done some research on, and I 'd like to just briefly go over that tonight for those people who may not have been at the 20th, August 20th meeting. The first item is the licensing program. It is clear to understand that the purpose of the licensing program is not to take the place of state licensing which all Class II and III group homes would need some sort of license to operate. The city is not going to be giving out licenses to operate group homes. That is not our job. What we would be doing is using the licensing program primarily to implement the separation and dispersion requirements that would apply to Class II and III group homes. That procedure would be similar to that used in the city's business license program in that the applicants would need to come in, fill out a form that would ask questions such as where the group home would be located, who the contact persons are, who the appropriate licensing agencies are, etc. That would be kept on file and that would be required of the group homes. If they were to be permitted to be located in the city, they must fill out these forms. The license would be renewed annually, and the purpose of that renewal would be primarily to update the city on any changes that may take place in either the nature of the group home, the number of persons, names of the contact persons or agencies if they were to change within a year's time. So that is primarily how the licensing program would work. And it would serve the city as a quick reference form, sort of a one-page summary of where a group home is, who the contacts are, who is living in the group home, etc. If there is any need to do any quick referencing as to what was happening at a particular site, we would have that all summarized on one sheet, and appropriate contacts for the group home. And as I mentioned earlier, this would be useful once we get a few group homes that may be located in the city and we wanted to determine for the purpose of siting a new group home whether it was at least 600 feet from the others. This listing of group homes would all be in one place so it would be that much easier for staff to determine whether a group was meeting that dispersion requirement. The monitoring program that we have been proposing would be an ongoing process, and it would also have a staff site visit occurring at least once a year. But it would be seen as ongoing in that there 3 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 may be times during the year that we would need to contact the group person . appropriate contact person or they may need to contact us. For instance, if there has been a change in who the contact person is or proposing some change to the group home, either the number of persons or something as a city in enforcing zoning code may be concerned with. And, again, monitoring by the city is not meant to take place of any monitoring that would occur by the state licensing agencies. We are not necessarily monitoring the operation of the group home, but we would be monitoring the group homes just to make sure that they have the same number of people that we permitted, that the type of people in the group homes are the same as those permitted, etc. Really what we would like to get across is that the staff role as we see it is to be a liaison between the citizens of Kent and the people that would operate the group home as well as the people who would live in the group home. That we see our role as that of trying to get better communication between the city and the group homes and see ourselves acting as liaisons. The staff person conducting the site visit would during that site visit be able to determine the following things: whether or not the home is operating as indicated on any conditional use permit that has been applied to them; whether it has passed the monitoring by the appropriate licensing agencies. We would not monitor them to see that they are meeting all their requirements. That is not anything that we would even try to pretend to know how to do, but what we would want to do is look at the report that the appropriate agencies have submitted to make sure that they have not found any problems. We would want to see that. And then we would also want to double check that they still maintain a current license to operate. If there is any chance that they could have had their license pulled and still be operating, it is probably very slim, but we would want to know for some reason that they had lost their license to operate. And the only other things that we would want to look at would be whether they had any complaint record, whether there had been any complaints during the year, and if so, had they been resolved. We would be interested in knowing that. From that we felt that we needed to develop a city policy regarding complaints. We hope there won't be a lot of complaints, but I think we need to be prepared for any that may occur if we have group homes II and III in the city. What we would like to do is assign the same person who would be doing the monitoring as the contact for complaints that the Planning Department may receive so that all complaints and all records could go pretty much through one person who would be coordinating all the records and information on Class II and III group homes. So, if and when staff does receive a complaint on a Class II or III group home, they would have to conform to the following procedure. It would be very important to notify the police if for some reason we would happen to be notified of a 4 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 matter that would really be a police matter. I would hope that if someone was concerned with an emergency issue they would call the police, but if for some reason they called the Planning Department, we would need to make sure that we notified the appropriate agency. We would notify the appropriate code enforcement division if it were a code enforcement matter. If someone was calling because the landscaping of the group home was looking kind of grungy or there was a problem, maybe it was a parking situation, that would be something that the monitoring person wouldn't necessarily enforce. But someone in our department or perhaps the Building Department, if it was sort of a building code or a fire code issue, we would need to notify the appropriate person. And in all cases we would want to notify the contact person at the group home whether or not the complaint was a legitimate complaint. We would feel that that person would have the right to know that someone was unhappy with something that was happening on their site, so they would want to make sure that they were aware of any complaints that were occurring. And, if necessary, the staff person would make sure to notify the appropriate licensing agency. The reason I say if necessary, it may be that if someone is complaining about a landscaping issue, that may not be something that the licensing agency would be concerned about. If it had something to do with operational safety kinds of things, then the licensing agency would certainly need to be notified. The staff person would then log the complaint, the date, the name, etc, phone number of the contact person to keep in their records, and also would try to follow up and determine whether the complaint was resolved, whether or not it was legitimate, and if so was it resolved. What happened? And then the final item that we were concerned with in our issue of trying to deal with complaints and trying think of all the possible scenarios, one that developed was the concern that in some cases the Police Department may be notified but the Planning Department may not have any notification for whatever reason. That is something we are working with the Police Department on in order to receive notification of any complaints so that we can keep those in our records and be able to review those with the group homes at the time of the annual review or if more serious, before the annual review. What we have worked out thus far. . .this is something that we talked about last time and there was some question as to how far we can go as far as a person' s right to privacy, and some records of the Police Department may not be . . . they may not be able to give them to just anyone if they are not a law enforcement agency. So what we are proposing to do is work with the Police Department so that we can be notified to the extent permissible under the laws that govern the individual 's right to privacy. The notification process may create a voluntary waiver which could be signed by an individual in a Class II or III group home saying that they are willing to participate in our notification process. I must stress, 5 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 though, that would be voluntary. You could not force someone to sign a waiver, but I believe that in the case of Class III individuals, there are some rules that govern them as far as notification to the community that this individual may be in your community. But in the case of Class II, I don't know that that is true. So, we would like to put that into place as well as work with the Police Department and see what they can tell us if not the person's name, at least that maybe an incident took place on a day so that we could keep that in our records in case these for some reason accumulate and become a problem. The other item that we talked about was conditional use permit criteria. And I 'd like to go over those real quickly. Basically, what we have proposed as staff is to add three criteria to apply to the Class II and III group homes when determining whether or not to issue a conditional use permit. And we need to stress that these are criteria, they are not the actual conditions. Conditions that may be applied to a group would relate to these criteria or they could relate to these criteria, but they would be very individualistic depending on the nature and the site of the group home and would be applied at the time a permit was issued. And I 'd just like to show this overhead that sort of puts these additional criteria into the framework of what we have currently in the zoning code. If you find this kind of hard to read, it is on page six of the handout, or it starts on page six. Basically the first eight are currently in our zoning code. They apply to any conditional use, not just group homes but any use that is either listed as a conditional use or subject to this criteria. And so, very quickly, the first one is that the proposed use and the proposed location will not be detrimental to other uses legally existing or permitted outright in the zoning district. Second item. Is the size of the site adequate for the proposed use. The traffic generated by the proposed use will not unduly burden the traffic circulation system in the vicinity. The other performance characteristics of the proposed use are compatible with those of other uses in the neighborhood or vicinity. Adequate buffering devices, such as fencing, landscaping, topographic characteristics, protect adjacent properties from adverse effects of the proposed use, including adverse visual or auditory effects. You can see that some of these are rather generic. Others may apply more specifically to group homes. Excuse me. Other uses in the vicinity of the proposed site are such as. . . (unclear) . . .at the proposed use to function effectively. This was an important item to the Commission because it was something you actually asked to see and indeed it already exists. So we sort of met that. . .that request. Number seven. Proposed request complies with the performance standards, parking standards and other applicable provisions of the code, and then any other similar considerations that may be appropriate to that particular case. That sort of leaves things a little bit open just 6 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 because we can't even guess as to all the uses that may come under conditional use permit requirement. The following three are criteria that staff is recommending be added to the zoning code and only apply to Class II and III group homes. It is important to understand that these would not apply to Class I, only II and III. But there are some cases where Class IC would be conditional. They would need to meet the first eight, but not the last three. So that is one way of seeing how you might use this if it were in effect. The first one is that the applicant must provide copies of the appropriate licensing criteria and rules they will operate under for city review. So that is an additional set of criteria in that one requirement that the city could look at to see if there was any special condition that we might need to place on a permit or whether or not we should even grant a conditional permit. That would be one other criteria that we could look at. The proposed Class II and III group home must meet the separation and dispersion requirements. That ties through this requirement our requirement to make Class II and III subject to separation and dispersion. And the final requirement being that the operating characteristics of the proposed II and III group homes be such as to ensure a means for ongoing communication with the city. This includes identification of appropriate contacts for establishing 24-hour contact availability. This criteria would deal with being able to. . .the proposed group home being able to meet our licensing and monitoring criteria, and we need to see that just because we have this program The framework within which the group home would operate would allow us to make a site visit annually and have some kind of communication with them. We would want to make sure that someone was there and was going to talk with us if it was necessary. So that is what we would need to see. So those are the three that we are recommending be added to the zoning code for II and III. When we were talking about. . .well, I guess first I 'd like to talk about code enforcement, and then I will get into the licensing language. When we were talking about conditional use permit criteria, there was a lot of questioning and concern about where we could put the requirement for licensing in the group homes. I guess I ' ll go ahead and mention that now. It is mentioned on page nine, and it is part of the recommended action for this evening to adopt this language and add it to the zoning code, but basically what we are recommending is to place that in the zoning code under the definition section where the definitions of the group homes and the requirement for separation and dispersion are clearly listed to. . .along with that list the requirement that license be obtained by the appropriate agency and include the city licensing requirement as well. So we felt that in looking through this material that this was the most appropriate and clearest place to put them, and then a condition could be applied as well that would tie in to that formally through the 7 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 conditional use permit process. But this way it clearly states that it is required in the zoning code. We have also prepared some information on code enforcement that was something people wanted to see exactly how code enforcement would work if it was necessitated, and that is on page seven in the handout. Again, as a Planning Department we can only be concerned where violations of zoning law, of our zoning code, of the zoning permit. We cannot be concerned with. . .we can be concerned, but we cannot enforce violations of criminal law or violations of license to operate. If they are operational violations, we, as a Planning Department, cannot enforce that legally. I just wanted to make that clear right off the bat. Examples of things that we may need to enforce that are zoning issues are issues such as parking violations, signage, landscaping maintenance, or violations of any condition that may be placed on a group home through our conditional use permit process. Section 15 dash 09 100 of the zoning code outlines the procedure for enforcing zoning code violations. And zoning code violations are considered a misdemeanor and are subject to a fine of up to $100 for each day the violation remains in place. Individuals can be subject to imprisonment if they participate, assist or maintain such a violation. So that is legally what we could do if there is an enforcement issue or violation that exists. Section 15. 09. 080 of the Kent Zoning Code allows for revocation of permits if any of the conditions or terms of a permit are violated. So, if for some reason a Class II or III group home were to violate one of its conditions established in a conditional use permit, for example, more people residing in a group home than we've permitted, so if we say and through our zoning code you are allowed up to ten and for some reason we are aware that there are fifteen people living in this home could attempt to revoke the group home' s permit if they do not resolve this problem. So the process for revoking a permit would be to hold the hearing in front of the Hearing Examiner for both sides would have the opportunity to present the case, and then the Hearing Examiner would make the determination whether the permit needs to be revoked or whether other mitigating actions may be necessary. Commissioner Miller: Janet, may I ask a question. Janet Shull: Umhmm. Commissioner Miller: I think the harder question is if they are allowed ten and then consistently have eleven. Fifteen is pretty clear. What if it is eleven or maybe occasionally twelve. Do you have any feeling about how strongly it is going to be enforced and what the Hearing Examiner is likely to do if it is a slight infraction rather than a major infraction. 8 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Janet Shull: I don't know. Personally I do not have a lot of contact with the Hearing Examiner to really feel that I know how that person would view it. I assume it would go to the Hearing Examiner and I would be guess, but say it is a lesser violation, I don't know how you would make that determination that maybe in the eyes of the Hearing Examiner it may be a lesser violation, maybe they would say. . .try to impose mitigating rather than revoking the permit. They may say you have six months to. . .I 'm just guessing, I have no idea, but, for example, they may say we' ll give you six months to find this person another home. If not, your permit is revoked. That may be a reasonable type. . .maybe someone from staff can jump up here if they have any better ideas, but. . . Lauri Anderson: Lauri Anderson with the Planning Department. I think that's really hard question to answer. . .certainly if they are over, they have a number of people that' s over the requirements in the permit, they are in violation. And I don't think there is a lot of room for interpretation. There would need to be some decision made. What the Hearing Examiner will do is not something we can predict. Commissioner Miller: But the referral would be made. Lauri Anderson: I 'm sure that it would. Commissioner Faust: That 's sort of what I was going to say, Coleen. I know you couldn't attend last week, but we've set out these classes. If it is a Class IA or IB and they are over the limit, they are no longer that particular Class IA, and so something would have to be done whether they were one person over or five people over. James Harris: Can I make a comment that is relevant to the Near East situation. You would just say get out, and we wouldn't mediate too much. You know, the head of the UN is going to try to talk to the head of Iraq. We may do some minimal talking and say that you have a month to get this person out of there, but then we'd take it to the Hearing Examiner. Now when it goes to the Hearing Examiner, you are in a different form. All we can do is present our side. They present their side, and it is kind of a judicial, quasi-judicial situation so we can't sway things, maybe, as much there. But here is possibility of appeal on from anything the Hearing Examiner does to City Council. That's the way I think we would treat it. . . (unclear) . Chair Martinez: But if our code says ten and there are eleven, it seems to me a whole person' s violation. It' s not like. . . 9 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 James Harris: Move that person out is what we would say. Chair Martinez: I think where it becomes sticky is where you have ten people, one of whom is getting ready to move out and you are moving the replacement in and there is going to be an overlap. Those are the kinds of icky ones. If we say ten and there are eleven, that's a violation. Right. Commissioner Chopp: My question is how do we find out if we can't go over there and say we want to inspect your place. James Harris: We may get a complaint from a neighbor. We may get the state licensing agency looking into it and as they do sometimes in day care facilities. They will say it's closer to you, you take care of it. And let us know what the problem is, although I think the state licensing agency is more likely to come down harder on them earlier and quicker than anybody else would. Commissioner Chopp: But there is nobody monitoring them to find out if they are. . . James Harris: We' ll be monitoring them once a year, so that's one way of looking at it. If something is getting out of hand in that one year, we' ll catch it sometime. Commissioner Miller: Then there will be an agency, I would very strongly presume, that will be paying per resident. And if you are very often paying for more residents than they are licensed for, they may be a source of violation not to us but will eventually come to our attention. That may be one of the sources that it will come from. Chair Martinez: One thing we haven't included, I don't know if it's relevant or not, but it seems to me that as part of the code enforcement that there should be a way of almost instant and automatic revocation of their permit. They lose their operational license. I mean, it seems like it should just be instantaneous particularly that they lose their operating, because we are depending on the operational license. . .or the operational. . .the organization that licenses them to do the actual monitoring of that operation. And if we use that monitoring device, I think we are in a very odd situation. I think we should have some provision to instantly revoke their permit. Is that legal? voices• (unclear) Chair Martinez: Absolutely. 10 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Fred Satterstrom: (unclear) Couldn't we go through all these presentations and then come back to all these questions when you are in the deliberation of the ordinance itself. . . (unclear) . . . Chair Martinez: Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Ward: But we only have one. . . (unclear) . . . Janet Shull: I wanted to use that as an example of one case where we may need to look into revoking a permit. It is also important to see it as another layer, because I think in that case the licensing agency would be foremost in seeing that the place was shut down. I would think that the agency in revoking the license would want to ensure that the people moved out if they took away their license and supposedly took away their funding as well. I think it would be very difficult for them to operate. What this does is tie in through zoning requirements another layer of enforcement. . .that we wouldn't be the only agency called upon to enforce. Through a zoning requirement we could tie into that licensing requirement. I just wanted to use that as an example. Commissioner Ward: I would think that if licensing was for some reason stopped or revoked, it would immediately stop operation, because there would be no money and most of these agencies, particularly a group home, would operate on the basis of the allocation of funds for its operation. Janet Shull: Right. But it is important, I think, for the community to feel that there is a mechanism for us to be overseeing that as well, so that is what this does. And basically that leads into the closing remarks as far as enforcement goes in that just wanting to clarify again that violations of criminal law and violations of state laws governing the licensing and operation of Class II and III group homes are not subject to City Planning Department enforcement unless they are something that we can specifically tie in with a condition or specifically relate to a zoning code requirement. And any incident regarding a criminal action or operational problem be investigated and acted upon by the appropriate agency. If the complaint came to us, we would make sure it got to the right person, and they would be the agency that would enforce that particular problem if it existed. And then just to clarify to the extend that a violation of criminal law or law governing the operation of Class II or III group home is tied to a zoning permit. Such violation can be enforced through Planning Department action. And I did go over the licensing language as to where we are suggesting implementing that, so basically I 'd like to close with the recommendations for pending actions you have before you tonight. And there is basically two actions that remain. The 11 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 first one being to amend the previously approved definition of Class II and III group homes to add the language which concerns the monitoring and licensing requirements that are shown on page nine in bold face and underlined type. That's what we are recommending be amended to what you have already approved. And then the second item being to amend the zoning code to the three additional conditional use permit criteria which again would apply to Class II and III group homes. And those are shown on page nine as well. So, those are essentially the two actions you have before you tonight. And if there aren't any more questions for me, I guess it's yours. Chair Martinez: I have one. When you log a complaint, where do you log it and how does it get in the history of the agency that we would be tracking. How does that get connected? Janet Shull: Each agency would have its own file, and then there would be a staff person in our human services department that would have a social services background that would be assigned to the monitoring. So that person, as I see it, and someone else may have a different. . .but as I have been seeing this as developing is that person would have charge of those files, and all the information on each particular group home would go into that file. Again, we are talking only about Class II and III, not all group homes in the city, just II and III. And currently we don't have any, I believe. Chair Martinez: It wouldn't be a log of all the complaints we've had about II and III, but it would in fact be a log of all the complaints we've. . . Janet Shull: No, and that would work in conjunction with the monitoring system so that when you go to that site you take that file and have the history of what happened last year and this year. Maybe they are doing better this year or not so good this year, and so you would have the history for each group home. Commissioner Chopp: I 'd like to add something to that, when you mentioned having the authority to close them down, and I think that is rather (unclear) to closing a home like that, because these people are depending on the home. I don't think we should have to close it, but correct the problem rather than close them. Because if you close them, where are these people going to go. Janet Shull: That's a very good point, and I think our hope is that it very rarely would come to that, but that issue would be resolved before it came. . .I think the people that are running the group home would tend to be cooperative because they are dependent on state money, perhaps private money as well through donations. 12 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 I would think they would want to cooperate. I don't think they would want to be shut down, and I would be very surprised if it came to that, but we do need to have these mechanisms in case for some reason people were uncooperative and there were problems. I think people in the community want to see that, but on the other hand I think your point is very important that we don't necessarily want to be running people out of town on the least little thing. That we would want to work with people, that we do want to have some mechanism if we need it, so. . . Chair Martinez: Are there any other questions? Do we have a sign- up sheet? Janet Shull: There is one right up here. Chair Martinez: Did any one sign up? Voice• (Unclear) Chair Martinez : But we have someone who would like to speak. If you will step to the microphone. Jack Cosby: I 'm Jack Cosby. I live at 525 VanDeVanter in Kent. A number of questions are in my mind. I guess I ' ll start off by saying that on the face of it I am against Group Homes I, II and III. There is a petition before the City Council right now complaining about multi units, and what is being proposed here is something like putting up multi units, but not multi units by definition. I hear you people and I don't know all of you, but the ones I do know I certainly respect. I hear you guys saying we' ll close them down. Can we do this? You don't know. I know you don't know. Nobody knows. So you get some problems and you're going to have citizens screaming and yelling even before the problems come up, so I 'd say on group homes II and III, I 'm trying to keep this short. What's in it? What are we doing? Why are we doing this? It is nice that group homes are needed, certainly, probably true. I 'm sure it is true. But what is in it for the City of Kent? Okay. Then going to group homes I, opening a group home in a neighborhood of single family residences. Maybe you should think about allowing mother-in-law apartments in single family residences, maybe you should think about allowing duplexes, because that is what you are doing. You are saying you can have a group home and you can have ten people in it, but no you can't have a duplex there and you can't have a mother-in-law apartment there. Think this thing out. I really don't want a group home in my neighborhood I, II or III. I don't want it. And I think there are a lot of people out there who won't. 13 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Chair Martinez: Before you go are there questions. I have some if you don't. Commissioner Faust: Go ahead. I don't have a question, just a comment. Chair Martinez: You do understand that we are not, for Class II and III, we are not approving any Class II or III at this time. We are just putting the conditions in should someone approach us that we would have some conditions whereby we would have some control. As I understand, it right now there is very little control over what would happen should an organization like a group II or III comes in. They are conditional permits. We don't have all this apparatus in place to make sure that the city is not harmed. You do understand that. Jack Cosby: If you are saying that. . .okay, what I am saying is that I am against them in Kent. And if you are saying, well right now there could be some and we don't have any apparatus, then I 'm saying I 'm against them. James Harris: May I interject something, Madam Chair. I think there may be some confusion because Mr. Cosby's discussion or dialogue goes along the line that we are allowing a kind of a quasi multifamily, which would indicate that we are allowing these in R1 or single family. The only ones we allow in single family are the Class IA, which are kind of controlled by the Federal Fair Housing Act, and every Class IB, IC, Class II and Class III, none of those are permitted in single family residential. First time they show up is in multifamily. And then some of them start showing up as conditional use permits multifamily, which makes it even tougher. I just wanted to clarify that. Chair Martinez: Thank you. Commissioner Faust: That was the clarification that I wanted to make, Jack, is that the only group homes that are going to be allowed in single family areas are going to be group homes in Class I that are six people or fewer. And by definition of family, we have decided that that is a family. Six people, only now they don't have to be related any more, but it is six people. And on the other thing, and I know this is one of many reasons why we are doing this, but as far as what is in it for the City of Kent, a lot of these people will be Kent citizens, so it is our citizens, and it is not necessarily somebody else's citizens, it is our citizens who happen to need a different kind of home arrangement. So, as far as what is in it for Kent, one answer to that at least is that it is Kent's way of dealing with its own citizens. 14 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Jack Cosby: There's no guarantee that they would be Kent's citizens. Commissioner Faust: Absolutely none, but we do know that there are people in our community out there who fit these three. . .certainly the first two classifications. I don't know about the third. Jack Cosby: Sure Commissioner Faust: And I 'd just like to reiterate what Linda has said and that is that II's and III 's as conditional use permit, and I, as an attorney, would rather. . . I 'd feel a lot more comfortable having these conditional use criteria in place and having the City of Kent be prepared in case something comes up than having us not be prepared and suffer the consequences of not being prepared. And you probably know what happens, Jack, about what happened with the City of Renton trying to regulate after the fact where an x-rated movie theater went, and they ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court on that one. And they lost. And one of the reasons they lost was because they didn't have the criteria in effect ahead of time. I consider this insurance. Whether we ever have a Group II or Group III home in this city, this is insurance. And I feel real comfortable about that kind of insurance for the city. Jack Cosby: Great. I appreciate that. Chair Martinez: Questions. Commissioner Miller: Madam Chair, I just want to make a brief comment to the question of what is in it for the City of Kent. All of the children, all of the young people will not be from Kent. Right now the kids from Kent are going elsewhere and another community is taking care of them. But it is simply taking care of our own kids. Not all of these kids are violent. Not all of these kids are dreadful. Some of these kids need some place to live, and they are going to come back to our community. And I think we need to give them as loving and positive an environment to live in as we can, because they are our kids, whether they are from Renton or whether they are from Auburn. We may get some Seattle kids, but right now some of our kids are going to Seattle and Tacoma. I can't think of all of the places that there are group homes. They are our kids. I would not turn away one of my children who was ill or sick. I presume you wouldn't. I wouldn't turn away my parent or someone else who had a problem, and I think the community of Kent is very much like a family with the same responsibilities. We need to take care of our own people, our own citizens. Some of them will be from someplace else, but our kids are also going elsewhere, so I think on balance it will work out. 15 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Chair Martinez: Other questions, comments. Thank you. Jack Cosby: Thank you. Chair Martinez: Is there anyone else who wishes to speak. Sir. Identify yourself, and then come up and sign in. Leon Adams: I am Leon Adams. I live at 244th and 35th. Tracy, you were mentioning maximum of six in Class IA, which would be single, and now I see a maximum of ten residents, including resident staff. Now is that. . . Commissioner Faust: What page are you on? Leon Adams: I 'm on page two. Am I on the wrong spot or. . . Commissioner Faust: No, you are on the right spot. I correct myself. It was a maximum of eight, not six. Thanks. Leon Adams: Now that is in a single, how do you classify that. A single dwelling, which would be what. . .a three-bedroom house or how is that classified. I am not totally sure. Commissioner Faust: There is no classification. It is just a single family dwelling. Leon Adams: A single family dwelling. Okay. Is there any maximum, I mean, does it have any stipulations two bedrooms, or that type of situation. I see that like a three bedroom house with ten people in it. I see that as being overcrowded. Commissioner Ward: Oh, it may be, but someone corrected me before in the sense that if the kid or the person that is handicapped, they only allow one per room. Isn't it, therefore, the state's regulation and what have you would determine how many bedrooms. If they were handicapped, if there were six people there, there would be six bedrooms. Leon Adams: Right, and that' s a handicapped situation. But what about . . . Commissioner Ward: Some other situation. . .by the same token I would assume they would probably (unclear) . Leon Adams: Okay. All right. Are there any guidelines to that, I mean are there "x" amount of bedrooms that you only can have. Can they get five people in a bedroom or something like that, I 16 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 guess that is my question. If the house has only three bedrooms, what's to stop them from putting ten people in that house? Commissioner Faust: What' s to stop them from doing that now? What's to stop a family with a whole bunch of kids having a three- bedroom house and having all the boys in one room and all the girls in another. It can be done right now in any single family area in the city. Leon Adams: I agree with you. Commissioner Faust: There's no restriction now. What we are doing is simply saying this is going to be considered a family unit. And as Ray was saying, a lot of licensing places do have restrictions, but there is nothing to stop anybody right now from doing that in the City of Kent. Leon Adams: Do you consider that safe? Commissioner Faust: It is not up to me to decide whether it's safe. The City of Kent doesn't have, at least it is my understanding and I see the staff here jumping up and down, it my understanding that the City of Kent doesn't have any authority whatsoever to tell a family how many people they can put into a bedroom. There might be regulations that the Fire Department can impose for safety reasons, but the City of Kent looks into people's houses and say whoops, you have got one person too many in that bedroom. Leon Adams: We're discussing this, right. Commissioner Faust: It's like anybody else who moves into that neighborhood. Lauri Anderson: May I make a comment. Chair Martinez : Yes. Lauri Anderson: This is Lauri Anderson with the Planning Department. Tracy is correct in terms. . . if a family were to move into a single family home, certainly we, as a Planning Department, don't tell them how many people they can have in a given bedroom. I really want to reiterate the fact that there are for (unclear) Class IA's there are fire safety requirements, particularly for handicapped, children, and that kind of a situation, when we are not talking about unrelated, able-bodied people living in the same house. There are restrictions, and your concern is very valid, and there are health/safety requirements that would have to be met. 17 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 You couldn't cram six handicapped persons into a bedroom in a group home Class IA. Chair Martinez: And you can't be a foster home and put. . .there is a limit. . .there is an amount of per square footage that one has to have to be permitted to be a foster home. Leon Adams: I was just thinking about numerous amounts of cars or that type of situation if they get a lot of people. Just something to think about. What. . .also, is there a. . .what am I trying to say here, in a Class II and III there was a process if there was continuing complaints or something that was done, is that not affected in Class I. That' s just a question. . . Chair Martinez: No. My understanding is, correct me if I am wrong, we are the jurisdiction for—Class I is like a protected class in the same way that those of us who are in a certain age group are a protected class. Voices• (unclear) Chair Martinez: And so group IA is indeed out of the jurisdiction of Kent in terms of those sorts of things. The fact that we include them sort of acknowledges that we have included them, if I am not. . .have I stated that correctly? Voice: They are protected, handicapped and etc. are protected by the Fair Housing Act and are to be given the same rights and privileges to live where they chose in the city. . . (unclear) Chair Martinez: Actually, we have said that a nonhandicapped person living in a family, six persons not related by blood could live there so. . . Leon Adams: Is there any way to give priority to Kent individuals? Is that at all possible? Chair Martinez : I don't think so. Voice: No. Commissioner Ward: The state regulations would make the determinations of assignment and what have you. And I don't know whether they would separate. . .Kent residents are going somewhere else now because we don't have any. All of this is about preparing for the eventuality that a sponsoring agency does make application in order to bring a Class II or Class III group home into Kent and whether that happens, and if it happens then by the same token we 18 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 have some regulation in place within our code requirements in order to govern, at least to some degree over what we have presently. That is what this is all about. Leon Adams: Are there other Class I groups in Kent? Commissioner Ward: Class I groups can go just anywhere. I 'm sure we do. Chair Martinez: We don't know. Basically, we don't know. Commissioner Miller: To answer a little bit your question, it is somewhat self limiting because families generally want to visit their children, so you generally get kids from a common area. They won't all be Kent, I would strongly guess, but they may be South King County kids. And the further away they are, you may occasionally get some because there won't be space available someplace else. We may get kids from Pierce County or from North King County just like if homes were full here, they may go to these other jurisdictions. But you want to keep kids as close to their family as you can, so I think that it is a little bit self limiting, but it won't work perfectly just by nature of when beds are available and what is available. Leon Adams: Thank you. Chair Martinez: Thank you. Please come up and sign in. Thanks. Bureaucracy. Thanks. Is there anyone else who wishes to say anything. I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing. Commissioner Ward: So moved. Commissioner Faust: Second. Chair Martinez: All in favor. Voices• Aye. Chair Martinez: Okay. I would like some discussion. I assume there will be some of what. . .of the suggestions that have been brought to us for entering the definition. . .changing. . .amending the definition that we have already accepted. That would be the first one. And then some of the additional conditions. So. . . Commissioner Faust: I don't have any, Madam Chair, I don't have any discussion on the definition. I do have some. . .a comment on some of the things that Janet went over tonight, so if there is discussion on the definition, I ' ll hold off. 19 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Chair Martinez: Okay. Does anyone have any problem with the definition or want to clarify anything? I think this is the spirit that we talked about that, you've met the spirit of what we were talking about in workshop, that is making sure that our license is right in line with making sure that the organization is licensed to do whatever they are going to do. Any other comments about this one? Okay. You're on, Tracy. Commissioner Faust: Great. I want to say that I feel a whole lot better after hearing what Janet has said about how we are going to add additional conditional uses and how we are going to monitor and enforce the group II and III homes. That was. . .anybody who was here for the first public hearing knows how serious those issues were to the people who were here at the meeting that night, and I 'm sorry that some of those people aren't here tonight, because I think that some of their fears would have been allayed, and I am really pleased to see the information in here on monitoring and the kinds of at least limited controls that Kent can place on these homes have indeed been placed. And I feel real good about that and I have every expectation that Mr. Price will duly report that in his article so that the people who couldn't be here tonight are at least given some assurances, because I know that was a big deal. I feel better about it, and I feel a lot more comfortable about voting for the rest of this knowing that we do have some monitoring procedures in place, and that we do have a procedure that, if necessary, can actually yank a conditional permit if it comes to that. So I am prepared to vote for them now that I know that. Chair Martinez: I did have a question, and that was is there . . .we said that as an ongoing monitoring process and one would expect that they would. . .you talked about the 24-hour communication which would mean that when the contact changed, they should let you know. Those sorts of things. Did you think of it. . . Am I doing that? James Harris: No, it' s the (unclear) . Chair Martinez: I thought I was doing something. Sorry. Just because I 'm not paranoid doesn't mean I couldn't do it. Did you consider that there was any time when we should build into this business license "thingy" that they should immediately contact us. I mean, that would be built into this whole thing. They should immediately contact us when. . .perhaps the population served has been changed, or the licensing. . .sponsoring agent has changed. Because I imagine that could happen, not usually, but it could happen and it could happen between monitoring visits. And then that the contact names could change. Did you consider that and what did you think about that. 20 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Lauri Anderson: This is Lauri Anderson with the Planning Department. We discussed this at the workshop last week. By making one of the criteria for reviewing a conditional use permit, they provide a sort of a system to ensure that we have 24-hour contact availability. What we are doing is putting the burden on them to think about how they are going to do that, and they are going to present to us with their application some kind of a means for doing that. In other words what we are asking them for is a plan of action. How are we going to know that we will have 24-hour contact availability? Is that. . . In other words, if they come to us and say well, we are going to fill out your license and that way you will always know how you can reach us, that doesn't ensure. . . Chair Martinez: Right. Lauri Anderson: . . . it has to be more comprehensive than that. They have to ensure a means so that we would always know. And of course that would entail notifying us if the contact changes. Now we could, I mean if what you are asking is that we add a phrase, for example, to the licensing form that says that if there is a change in any of this information, your responsibility is to immediately notify the Planning Department at 859-3390. Commissioner Ward: Sounds like application (unclear) . And you could have certain questions on the licensing application, an asterisk or something of sort, and a footnote to say any change to any of the above requires immediate notification to the city. Then you basically cover it. Lauri Anderson: We could easily do that. Commissioner Ward: And if they don't, then it is a violation and we could complain like anyone else and go through our conditional use process in order to do something about it. Lauri Anderson: Okay. Chair Martinez: I guess the problem I 'm having is ensuring a means for ongoing communication with the city is one thing to me. But if you said ensure a means to identify appropriate contact, the appropriate contact, the appropriate 24-hour contact so this is really clear what one wants there, which is we want to know all the time who that person is. We don't necessarily. . . it is not to. . .yes it is, I was going to say it is not to ensure communication. What we really want here, unless I am badly mistaken, is we want to ensure that we know who the responsible party is at all times. Isn't that what we want? Communication is lovely, but we want to 21 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 know who is responsible. And I wish we'd say that. Is that too straightforward for some reason. Lauri Anderson: We come back to the issue of criteria versus conditions. Chair Martinez: I know that. Lauri Anderson: Okay. And as a criteria, I guess what we were looking at is how we could word that to ensure that they would put before us a system to guarantee that we would always know that person. And by putting it in a criteria telling us who the person is, by telling us who the person is doesn't solve the problem. We need to hear about the system. How are they going to keep us notified who the person is? Maybe I am getting confused. Chair Martinez: Maybe you should say that. Maybe you have and I 'm just reading it. It seems to be a little turgid. Now what it seems to me, it seems to me it has a potential for being misunderstood. Lauri Anderson: Okay, so your suggested change is. . . Chair Martinez: Is that. . .precisely what you just said. Fred Satterstrom: Some legalese here for you. Carolyn Lake has been kind enough to come up with some language that might help to go on our license, not that you have to adopt it. But she has suggested that any change in the above information requires immediate notification to the Kent Planning Department. Failure to do so is a violation of licensing requirements and may result in revocation of license or conditional use permit. Chair Martinez: Yes. Yes. Yes. Commissioner Ward: Isn't that what I said earlier, though. Chair Martinez : You said it so plainly. She said it so elegantly. Voices• (unclear) Lauri Anderson: Okay, so that deals with the license issue, but in terms of the criteria. . . Chair Martinez: Then I am very happy with this language, because that issue then. . .communication then is the issue here, not that one particular. . . and that satisfies me a great deal then. 22 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Lauri Anderson: Okay. Chair Martinez: Is there any other discussion? Commissioner Chopp: I 'd like to make a comment here because I think the way this is written up is pretty forward about everything and I don't think they have left anything out. But did we ask some other people who are familiar with group II and III homes, did you see what they had written up. Is there any guidelines that you used to write up these here so we don't lose out on something. Should we check with somebody, or did we leave anybody out. Janet Shull: This is Janet Shull of the Planning Department. As far as I know, this system that is being proposed is the first, at least in this area. I mean I don't know of any other cities that do anything like this. Now there may be some and we are just not aware of it, but when we did look at neighboring jurisdictions, to our knowledge none of them. They may apply conditions through the conditional use permit process that would get at some of these things, so some of the things we've looked at. . . We've looked at conditions on existing group homes to get some ideas as to how we may want to write up some criteria, but to my knowledge there are no other cities around Kent. There may be some in the nation somewhere that have a special system of monitoring and licensing and special conditional uses, so we may be a first. So, there are some good things and bad things about it, maybe, but it is something that our committee, and our commission and our public seems to think it is important to have. Commissioner Ward: Group homes have been in existence for a long time, and I am assuming that Class II and Class III I know were in existence in the early seventies in Seattle. But the question, I gather, is whether Seattle had anything in place to cover themselves as far as the location is concerned. Perhaps we could ask the Planning Department at Seattle as to whether they (unclear) . The Model Cities funded group homes and they were Class II and III type. They were for criminals and for people that did (unclear) and the whole basic smear. And I was with the program at the time. Fred Satterstrom: We've definitely plowed some new soil on this one, because not only have we gone to the distinction between the different classes of uses which we've seen other jurisdictions use, but you have also added separation and dispersion requirements on top of that. That is kind of a new wrinkle. And the licensing and monitoring and special conditional use permit criteria definitely is some new ground. So I have a hunch that other cities will be 23 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 looking to the City of Kent as a model here, perhaps in terms of the job that you and your staff have done. . . Chair Martinez: And the original committee, don't forget them. Fred Satterstrom: The committee on group homes. Carolyn Lake just gave me a publication that she got just today. It is a publication from the Association of Washington Cities, and what it is, it is a model ordinance for siting residential care facilities. And I just looked at it very briefly and in Carolyn Lake's opinion it was much the same. I have much the same opinion as Carolyn does in that it is really oversimplified. I think we have gone well beyond this model ordinance here, and it certainly would not serve our purposes at all. It doesn't even distinguish between the different classes of group homes. So, I guess, to make a long story short, we are breaking some new ground. I think others will be looking to us on this. I say that in a positive way, too. We are plowing new ground. I think these crops are going to grow. Commissioner Ward: We're pioneers in the industry. Chair Martinez: I think that there are going to be citizens that believe that we have not listened to them, but I feel that we are responsible to the whole community, not just part of it, and that I think we did listen to them. I personally understood that people are very uncomfortable in having group homes in their community, and I 'm hoping that indeed that we have put these protections in place, that both protect our community while also making sure that we live up to the responsibility that we have when we raise people who don't quite fit into our community. So, I don't normally make a speech, but I feel pretty passionately about this one. Is there other discussion? Voice: Question. Chair Martinez: We don't have a motion on the floor. I would entertain a motion. Commissioner Faust: Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the recommendations for pending action as stated on pages eight and nine of the document that we have been working from this evening. Commissioner Ward: Second. Chair Martinez: Is there further discussion? Question. All in favor. Voices: Aye. 24 Kent Planning Commission August 27, 1990 Chair Martinez: Opposed. (silence) Motion carries. Before we leave, do we need to do anything about this license application, this asterisk thing that you will be. . .that the license will be immediately revoked. Or is that something that you all take care of. Excellent. You know that is our intent. Lauri Anderson: I might comment that these then would be adopted as our administrative procedures for handling group homes. Chair Martinez: Excellent. So these will be drawn up and the entire package will be sent to the City Council for their consideration. It would behoove us all to be there when these are considered, because I believe that because of the concern of the community, that we will all want to talk about how we responded to this. (End of Verbatim Minutes) Discussion followed regarding the City Council hearing date on this issue. ADJOURNMENT Commissioner Miller MOVED to adjourn the meeting. Commissioner Faust SECONDED the motion. Motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 9: 05 p.m. Respectfully submitted, titer cr--rT S Jam P. H rris, Secretary 25