Once again tonight, the Planning and Zoning Commission will discuss addition of a text amendment to the zoning code to allow temporary overnight shelters under the special use permit process. The meeting will take place at Emerson Middle School, 8101 North Cumberland Avenue, Niles, IL at 7:00 p.m. We strongly urge people to attend this meeting. After all, somebody is going to have to brief Mayor Howard on what took place at the meeting, should Mayor Howard choose to attend the Packers game instead of Planning and Zoning tonight.
If you've had a chance to read the staff generated background memo.pdf on the city website, and if you've done your homework on homeless shelters, then you know somebody has got shit for brains.
The memo says, "staff will provide factual responses to some of the comments to help guide the Commission in its decision-making." The memo goes on to "provide", in part, the following two claims:
1. -- "sex offenders exist in most communities and are not necessarily associated with shelters or the homeless."
2. -- "Several comments were made associating the homeless with crime, disease, and drug and alcohol abuse. Unfortunately, these issues exist in all communities and are not necessarily related to shelters or the homeless."
Those claims are factually false and ignore the Planning and Zoning Commission's statutory mandate to consider the impact of use on the general health, safety and welfare of the community.
Even the most cursory of Google searches would reveal reports strongly refuting the claims made in the staff background memo. We'll leave you to it.
While you're at it, you may want to check out the Attorney General's I-SORT (Illinois Sex Offender Registry Team) "Operation Location Unknown". You don't suppose any of the sex offenders, whose location is unknown, would be using homeless shelters, do you? No way -- reports on the use of homeless shelters by sex offenders is just more over-the-top fear mongering by snobby suburbanites. The rockin' tight screening process of shelter operators like PADS will keep sex offenders out of the St. Paul of the Cross school gym, and of course the archdiocese can be counted on!
The PRU Crew has the uneasy feeling that the claims made by staff were the result of "resources" other than empirical research. We're getting the sense that a loosy-goosy text amendment as originally written, allowing temporary homeless shelters to operate wherever and whenever they choose, is a done deal.
As for Ms. Carrie Davis, acting Director of Community Development, by our count she is now 0 and 3 in providing information to those with questions about a zoning issue.
Addendum: The Pub-dogs have asked some key questions of the background memo regarding this topic -- see their annotated .pdf link. Most excellent, Pub-dogs!
28 comments:
I don't get to log on as often as I like, so I'm sure I missed something. So, could someone here help me out?
We are talking about a PADs shelter in Park Ridge. But the meeting is in Niles.
Niles? "The meeting will take place at Emerson Middle School, 8101 North Cumberland Avenue, Niles, IL at 7:00 p.m."
Could they do anything more to discourage community involvement?
Yes they could, Charles. They could ignore every issue raised by the people who want real controls and standards on these shelters.
Oh, wait a minute...that's what Carrie Davis did.
Charles:
I guess you could call the location ironic but discourage community involvement??? Come on! It is not as if they are having the meeting in Iowa. You could WALK down Prospect from SPC and be at Emerson in about 10-15 min. It is about a 3 min drive. My daughter will be going to Emerson for Middle school.
I think the reason it is at Emerson has to do with the potential crowd size and having a larger room so that more people can attend if they so choose.
I understand we all think this is a bad idea but to accuse them of choosing Emerson to discourage community involvement is a bit much.
Shhhh!! Let's move the meeting to Emerson. Don't tell anyone.
Why not have the meeting at ground zero - SPC's gym? I'm sorry, I mean the Morello Parish Life Center....which just happens to look exactly like a school gym.
Anon 12:21. Fair enough. At the same time, have you ever been involved in Garden Club (or any other) walks? People in Park Ridge visit the homes in Park Ridge, but won't visit homes in Niles. In my years here, they just don't (my point), no matter what the proximity (your point).
At the same time, it seems that in a town as parochial, if you will, as our own, one with all the schools and public buildings that we have, the meeting could be held in, oh I don't know, Park Ridge.
Or, alternatively, why not just hold it in the gymnasium under discussion? If cots can go in a gym to create a PADs shelter, then surely chairs can go in, so people can see for themselves what the facility looks like, what sort of access is available to the school at large and measure for themselves the proximity to children would be had. Seems to me that doing so would enable us all to have a that much more informed discussion.
Instead, Niles, for those who will go.
SPC is holding their curriculum night this evening, kicking off with a general session in the GYM/PLC at 6:30. Many of us have multiple classrooms to visit tonight....and I'm hoping that attendance at the P&Z meeting doesn't suffer because of that.
That ISORT link is scary. I counted 3 that are homeless of all those that can't be located and many that use aliases. Unbelievable.
Please, please to the Commission, please consider the safety of our community before you let these shelters go anywhere. Please.
Charles:
I do not know exactly why it is at Emerson instead of Lincoln or Main South. Maybe there were scheduling issues with other sites. The last meeting was there as well and there was no backlash.
I do know this. For me, this is a stupid issue. Good lord, there are so many things about this that are wrong that need to be discussed. To hang them for having the meeting at Emerson is petty. Your position seems to be that there are people who are extremly pationate about this issue yet unwilling to drive across Oakton to attend a meeting. What???
And then you suggest SPC as an alternate site? Maybe this city committee wanted to have their meeting in a public building. I can just imagine the comments on this blog if the meeting were at the SPC gym. "The city is working an inside deal with Fr. Carl....this is more intimidation....this was not a fair playing field....the city should not have had a meeting at a private, religious facility". The city would be hanged right here on this board!!!!!
Think for a second about what your position, if true, says about the population of Park Ridge . God do I hope you are wrong.
Anon@2:44 --
You are correct, we would have hung city officials, figuratively, if they had opted to hold this meeting in the SPC Morgymello Shelter.
And you should note our lack of objecting to this meeting being held in !gasp!, Niles.
The Maine South meeting space is being used for a District 207 Board meeting tonight and that space wouldn't be big enough for this Planning and Zoning meeting. Also, we here the Maine South meeting space may not be big enough for another overflow crowd who will possibly attend to talk about the riveting issue of teaching teens about birth control in the biology curriculum. Seems the Illinois Family Institute is again trying to get mentions of birth control removed from the science curriculum.
Because as we all know, abstinence only instruction is totally effective.
Yep. Just ask Sarah Palin.
Say what you may about the woman, she does put her family where her mouth is. That's more than we can say for the PADS contingent.
Hey Anonymous, go eff yourself. Abstinence is 100 percent effective if used. If abstinence is not the chosen method, than pregnancy is a risk you take. Stick to the subject of the blog, and leave Sarah Palin out of this.....dick.
So Firmark's a Packer's fan.
Wonderful.
Has someonw touched a Sarah-Palin-is-not-qualified nerve?
Anonymous-
Hey Douchebag, put the wheels back between the white lines, you're wandering a bit . We are talking about shelters and the PRC, not the soon to be, first woman vp. You need to step up your game a bit to hit a nerve, you're not that witty.
Pru:
The location issue seems to die down and so you drop in the contraception issue. You are the Master!!!!!
That's because we can't ask Sarah Palin anything because they keep her out of sight.
I bet your teens never even think about sex.
By the way your logic defines your giftedness.
Yeah leave Sarah out of this.
I mean come on she's only running for Vice President.
We merely stated that there is another meeting taking place in another site suggested for the Planning and Zoning meeting, and we explained what may be taking place at that meeting.
We often remark on related issues being talked about in the community, even when the subject of our day's post is something else.
We don't demand strict adherence to a topic from commenters, or we wouldn't have posted your comment. And we don't strictly demand that from ourselves either.
Hey name caller:
Oh, I guess it was the my-vote-for-McCain/Palin-in-Illinois-does-not-matter-anyway nerve.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...you know, all that celebrating you're doing...but I'm curious as to why my comment wasn't posted...
Can you help a moderator out? What comment? What post? What day?
That would be this one:
The Guttmacher Institute has released statistics that show this. Of course, they didn’t see the connection even though the answers were in the same 10 question quiz. They report that between 1995 and 2002 formal instruction of birth control declined among males from 81% to 61% and it declined among females from 87% to 70%. They report that along with this decline they saw an increase in abstinence education. Among males: 9% to 24%; among females: 8% to 21%. Then they report that between the same years of 1995 to 2002 teen pregnancy decreased 24%. They concluded that this decline was due to increase and correct use of contraception among teens - however less teens were being educated on contraception. So, the less education on contraception resulted in higher use of contraception? They failed to put together that the decrease in comprehensive sex education with an increase in abstinence education resulted in a decline in teen pregnancy.
http://www.guttmacher.org/support/quiz.html
In response to this one:
Because as we all know, abstinence only instruction is totally effective.
September 8, 2008 3:10 PM
mk --
We don't have any record of that comment being delivered prior to your more successful effort today.
By the way mk, abstinence is 100% effective. Abstinence only education is not. But we get the idea that if you think the Guttmacher Institute isn't as perceptive as yourself, we haven't got a chance.
I think it is a fabulous idea to hold these meeting at the St. Paul PLC. I am sure that Father won't object. I mean, what's good for the homeless is surely good for the residents of Park Ridge right???
Well considering that the Guttmacher Institute is in the pocket of Planned Parenthood...
The point is, that comprehensive sex ed doesn't work either.
If YOU think that it does, we haven't got a chance.
In your own words 100% abstinence works 100% of the time.
You figure it out.
We have figured it out, mk. We're going to keep on supporting education over ignorance. And we wish you and yours many blissful years ahead.
"We have figured it out, mk. We're going to keep on supporting education over ignorance."
Isn't that the definition of insanity? Repeating the same behavior but expecting different results?
Well, carry on. Just thought I'd throw in a little "fact" along with the rhetoric.
You can lead a horse to water...
Peace to you and yours...
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