I would ask that if any of you have your cell phones on your person, that you would turn them off, please, or put them on silent. If you have to address someone on the phone, if you would step outside, we would appreciate it so you don't interrupt someone talking. We would ask you to do that. Before we start with this case that was postponed to this date, we would ask the staff has submitted to the board the official meeting and filing schedule for 2012. I'll ask the board members if you've had an opportunity to look at that. If not, I'd like to have a motion to approve this schedule. Mr. Chair, is this the new dates to combine the June and the July hearings dates? I'll make a motion that we approve it. We have a motion. Do I have a second, please? Second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is clear. Take a second. We also have minutes here from December the 16th. If you don't have any questions, Board, I would like to have a motion to accept the minutes of December the 16th. Mr. Chair, I move to approve the December 16th, 2011 minutes. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? We also have minutes here from January the 27th, 2012. Do I have a motion for approval? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries. Now I want to, before we get into this case, I want to make a couple of comments relative to the procedure. We will ask for those to stand who are in opposition and for those who are in favor shortly. But before we get into that, I want to get an understanding that we're not going to allow any individual to talk beyond three minutes. And we're not going to hear any cases from a repetition standpoint. If we hear it over, I will interrupt you. If you have something new that someone has not presented in this case, you may bring it forward. We may hear it. But to hear the same thing over and over from everyone that's here, we're not going to do that. So we will give you the opportunity to speak if you have something that has not already been addressed and presented relative to this case pro or con. So those of you who are here in opposition, would you please stand, please? Thank you. Those who are here in favor of this case, would you please stand, please? Thank you. and I know we have the building over there who wants to also make a presentation. So we'll start with you, staff. The primary staff presentation will be given by Mr. Marks. I would like to pass out a few things that the Division of Planning has received. The first letter that we will pass out is a letter that the Division of Planning has received, And then following that will be documents that we received just prior to the meeting that our correspondence received from the 5th District Council office. So I'll pass those out to you now. So I gather that everybody that was in this support area or complaint area were notified. Am I correct? I have one petition here to finish it up. Is anything else from your side? Yes, sir. Mr. Mox, if you'd come forward, please. And if you have stuff you want, information you want to put up on the screen, please feel free to do that. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, board members. I think that the best approach for me at this point to take is to make sure you have a good understanding of the property that we're talking about, 824 Winchester Road. Also, I have a clear understanding of what this board approved a little over two years ago in March of 2010. I'm a small church with 30 sanctuary seats with activities twice per week. and then get into how it's actually been used over the past year or so. And then follow up with that in the supplemental report that all of you hopefully have had a chance to look at. We've identified several options for you to consider for discussion purposes mainly, so we'll go through all of those. Jimmy, if you can put the first overhead up there. 824 Winchester Road is this property right here it's at the corner of Winchester here and Dayton Avenue right here it's a relatively small lot of around 5,700 square feet which translates to a little bit over one tenth of an acre pretty much the entire lot is taken up by a single two story building right here of about 5,200 square feet 2,600 square feet per floor. The building is pushed up very close to the street right-of-ways on both sides of the corner. One angled portion of the building is maybe a couple of feet off the sidewalk along Winchester and then maybe 8 to 10 feet off the sidewalk along Dayton Avenue. When this was approved as a church back in 2010, one of the issues we had to address was the parking situation. As you can see here, this was a photo before the approval. Cars were parked blocking the sidewalk, so that was obviously something we had to address. When we redid the parking here, it only left two parallel parking spaces available, which left a shortage of four. For 30 sanctuary seats, the minimum required parking is six spaces. The four spaces were made up for on the adjoining lot, where they had an agreement to use four spaces back in this area here with this landowner, which is an auto repair business of sorts. A critical piece of this case is the zoning of the property. So the next overhead will give you a description of how these properties are zoned. The colors are kind of not coming out too right, so I'm adjusting here for the colors. The subject property is right here, 824 Winchester Road. What's coming out as gray on here, or at least to me looks kind of gray, is all B4 zoning, wholesale and warehouse business. That particular zone allows a church as a conditional use. It does not allow any type of residential facility with a couple of fairly limited exceptions. And it doesn't allow a community center, which does allow a residential component if it's of a social purpose. And we'll get into more of that community center description a little bit later. Surrounding zoning, real important to note, all of this, what's coming up as white on here, is R2, two-family residential zoning. This big block, all in here. The distance from a subject property to that residential zoning is less than 80 feet on the north side of Dayton Avenue and less than 50 feet on the south side of Dayton Avenue. So we have residential zoning that's less than 100 feet from the subject property, fairly large blocks on both sides of Dayton Avenue. In 2010, the Board approved a small church at this location. Like I said, it was approved for 30 sanctuary seats with activities two days per week. If we can get the next overhead. The approval was subject to five conditions. Those five conditions are laid out here. The first condition talks about the church being established in accordance with the submitted application. That's the standard way normally that these kind of things are addressed. You all have been through this many times with conditional uses. So the question is, in this particular case, how exactly did the submitted application describe what they wanted to do? If we could scroll up a little bit. I don't know if there's a way to get that clear. Well, we're getting a little closer. Condition number one. This is based on how the application was described. This was no negotiation. This was what they volunteered. This is what they wanted to do. Sunday morning church services at 8 a.m. and 11.30. Thursday morning transforming the mind classes at 9.30 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. Thursday evening Bible study at 6 p.m. and bus service for 75% of members. Now, I'm not going to stand here and nitpick over the days of the week, the hours of the week that activities were being held. That's not the point here. The point is traditional church-type activities twice per week. And if you go back up to condition number three, which is kind of a reiteration of what's already included in number one, because that was part of their submitted application, they wanted sanctuary seating for 30 persons. So this is what the approval of the condition use was conditioned on. This approval was granted to a group that went by the name of Inner City Breakthrough Ministries. Less than a year after the board's approval, they disassociated themselves from the property. They left. There's a letter that's included with your packet. that the Division of Building Inspection received on March 21st of 2011 that describes that. And it's an interesting letter. We don't need to dwell on it. But obviously things weren't working out the way they had anticipated, and they decided to leave the property. Shortly thereafter, the operation of the facility was taken over as a partnership between Emanuel Apostolic Church and the Catholic Action Center. If we can get the next overhead. So basically the conditional use was transferred. And the document that allows that is this certificate of occupancy. I think we're getting there. Okay. This kind of transfer is allowable. The original approval didn't have any mellongroid condition in it, so as long as the new occupants adhere to the conditions that the Board previously approved, you can do this kind of transfer. But it's important to look at the conditions. It must comply with Board of Adjustment Conditions for Case C 2010-20, which was the case number for the original approval for inner-city breakthrough ministries. It must maintain parking agreement per BOA. Second floor to be used for offices and classes. Real important that you recognize that for a later discussion. Maximum occupancy load of main auditorium of 30 persons. Well, it didn't turn out this way. In April of 2011, the Community Inn was established. That facility has been providing overnight accommodations for up to 75 persons on the first floor of the building. Seven days per week. In our mind, it's clear that that kind of use is a fundamental change in use from what the Board originally approved, well beyond the scope of what the Board originally approved. So it's our opinion that that's clearly out of compliance with condition number one. Some of you at this point may be thinking, okay, technically it doesn't comply with the conditions, but how is that significant, or is it significant? Well, there's three levels of significance that I want to go over with you. The first level, of course, relates to the zoning, the B4 zoning. This change in use is so substantial that it's put the use in a category that's not even allowed in B4. A residential facility. As I mentioned before, B4 only allows a residential facility in two very limited instances. It doesn't allow a community center either as a principal primitive use or as a conditional use. So that avenue is gone. The next level of significance. The intensity of the use. We're comparing a 30-sanctuary small church on just the first floor of the building up to 75 people on an overnight basis, seven days a week, not two days a week. So how does that intensity of use relate to how the surrounding neighborhood might be impacted? We were aware of numerous concerns that had been expressed by the neighborhood, both surrounding business owners and residents, over the past year as the community was established and operating. In order to get kind of an objective handle on that, we decided it would be a good idea to look at the police data for calls of service for 824 Winchester Road for the first four months of this year, January, February, March, and April, and compare that to all of the churches that we could locate within a half-mile radius of 824 Winchester Road. And I'm going to go over here and put up a map for you. This map identifies the subject property. Right in here, right in the center of this, this is the half mile radius. all of these blue blotches are churches that we were able to locate within a half mile. Now, we didn't selectively go out and try to pick a church that we thought might show certain kind of data. We just said we're going to find all the churches we can within that half mile radius and compare police calls of service for those facilities versus 824 Winchester Road. Okay. Okay. Okay. This, on the overhead, kind of summarized the data we got from the police department. This is unaltered data. This is exactly how it was submitted to us. We haven't massaged it. The only thing we've done at the bottom, which you might see, is just add a note that explains where it came from and the date that we got it. Four of the church facilities within that half-mile radius did not have any calls for service. These facilities at the top, there's two churches on Delaware, one on LeDonger, one on Loudon, that did have calls for service. A total is six. the total number of calls for service for that four-month time frame was 38, right here. So 32 of the 38 calls for service for at 824 Winchester Road. This column here kind of gives you a breakdown of the types of calls for service that were involved. You can see the high categories here, disorderly conduct 9, criminal trespass 8, A couple of assaults. A couple here. We don't exactly know what that means without some further investigation. So 32 of the 38 will for the one facility at Winchester Road. No matter how I describe this, it's probably going to appear as though we're trying to pick on this facility. That's not the case. It might appear like we're trying to make judgments about whether it's good or bad or better or worse than any other type of facility. And that's not the case. We're simply pointing this out to show that this type of facility is different than a church in terms of how it might impact the surrounding neighborhood. Those kind of impacts need to be recognized, and then they need to be managed. One of the concerns that we have, especially when we get to maybe evaluating some of the options later, is that the characteristics of this particular property don't lend themselves to managing those kind of impacts very well. A very small lot, a building pushed right up against the right-of-way on both Winchester Road and Dayton Avenue, that right-of-way defined by a public sidewalk. Residential zoning less than 100 feet away on both sides of Dayton Avenue. So you put all that in the mix, and it's a very challenging situation to accommodate that many people and expect there not to be impacts in those situations. The third level of significance has to do with the public notification process. When you all first considered this request for a church, notices went out to the surrounding property owners within 400 feet. That's the standard legal requirement, telling them that they wanted to start a church. We did get calls from the neighborhood expressing concern that it was going to be a homeless shelter of some sort. We talked to Pastor Morris with Inner City Breakthrough Ministries on more than one occasion, and he assured us that it was not going to be a homeless shelter or accommodate any kind of overnight residency of any kind. We passed on that assurance to the neighborhood. This neighborhood's been misled by what's actually happened. I don't know if you can call it intentional or just the process or whatever, but they have now gotten an accurate description of what activity was proposed or going to end up happening at that location. And that's obviously not how the public notification process is designed to work. More recently, some things have happened that I need to fill you in on relating to the expansion of the homeless shelter to the second floor of the building. Back in mid-February of this year, February 14th to be exact, there was a meeting at the Division of Building Inspection to discuss their proposal to expand the homeless shelter to the second floor, primarily for the purpose of being able to separate out men from the women. That meeting was attended by Nancy Marinero with Building Inspection, myself from Division of Planning, a couple of folks there from Division of Fire, Jenny Ramsey was there representing Catholic Action Center, and Pastor McDonald was there representing Emanuel Apostolic Church. We made it very clear and very direct at that meeting that there were very serious zoning impediments to having an overnight homeless shelter at this location. We volunteered to the Catholic Action Center. If they could provide us the name of their attorney, we would get him or her hooked up with our attorney, Rochelle Boland, and try to begin some dialogue about this, because obviously there was a major conflict in what they were planning to do and what we thought that the zoning allowed. That request was discarded or denied, not taken up. We never heard from any of the attorneys from the Catholic Action Center. after that meeting in mid-February about a month later if we can get the next overhead a certificate of occupancy was issued which allowed them to proceed with making some improvements for health and safety purposes to the second floor of the building there was a need for code reasons to do some changes to the windows so this certificate of occupancy was issued that allowed them to do that. But if you look closely at the conditions, what do we have repeated again? Must meet conditions of BOA, case C, 2010-20. So there was no change there, no authorization to do anything more than what you all originally approved. Upstairs, to be used for offices and meeting rooms. So there was a very clear requirement here that the upstairs could not be used for any expansion for overnight accommodations. Well, despite the verbal discussion we had at the February 14th meeting and this document here, which is the legal document that says what they can do at that location, they proceeded recently to expand the overnight shelter to the second floor of the building. There was a major announcement, I think a few days prior to the May 18th Board of Adjustment public hearing, where they announced the grand opening of the second floor for women for overnight shelter. So I think that their decision to do that just adds a lot of weight to our contention that they're operating not in compliance with the Board's original approval in 2010. Okay, so I've harped a lot about condition number one. The other condition that's not been complied with, which is relatively minor but needs to be mentioned, is condition number five. It talks about maintaining a parking agreement for the four spaces on the adjoining lot, 9-11 Dayton Avenue. They have not done that. Like I said, that's a relatively minor issue, but just for the record, there's a letter in your packets from the adjoining property owner indicating that they withdrew their permission or did not renew it when the new occupants came in. When inner-city breakthrough ministries left, there was no longer a parking agreement to use their four spaces. Okay. I think we're ready to move on to the options that are described in the back of your supplemental report. There's five options that have been identified. We presented the five mainly for discussion purposes. There's clearly one that we support. We'll get to that. Option one is that the board would decide not to revoke the conditional use and also find that the facility is in compliance with the board's original conditions. I'm sure there will be a lot of people here you hear from shortly that are going to be pressuring you quite a bit to go with this option. Words of caution on this option is if you decide to go this route or even thinking about it, there are very far-reaching implications to this. This would basically turn the regulatory process upside down. There would be no certainty as to what uses could happen and ones that couldn't. It would also kind of invalidate the meaningfulness of the public notification process if this kind of change was allowed and you all decided that it was still in compliance. For these reasons, our recommendation is that you pretty much dismiss option one altogether. But we did feel obligated to put it in there because, like I said, you're going to get pressured to go with that option today. Option number two is a little kind of an interesting twist on things, and it takes some thought to digest and get some meaning out of it. But under option two, the board would also decide not to revoke the conditional use. But at the same time, they would adopt a finding that said, as that facility is currently being operated, it's not in compliance. Well, from a practical perspective, what does this accomplish? Well, number one, it allows the current occupants or any future occupant to go ahead and maintain a church if they do it in a way that's in compliance with your all's original conditions. So it doesn't take that potential away. But at the same time, it allows enforcement to proceed with those aspects of the use that are determined to be out of compliance, which is basically the whole facility. So while this option does, in our minds, have some merit, it does get a little complicated from a legal perspective. It makes things kind of wishy-washy as to exactly what you're saying. So we kind of recommend at this point that you leave that open as a secondary choice, but not a preferred choice. The next two options, three and four, really are not in your direct control, but we wanted to put them in there because depending on how the current occupants look at those options, it may influence how you all proceed. Under option three, which is to amend the conditional use, an application would be made to amend the conditional use to add this component of the overnight shelter. Obviously our main concern with that is that that particular use is such a different change that it's pushing into the category that's not permitted in B4. So if they did decide to do that type of amendment, it would not just be a request to amend the conditional use. It would have to be accompanied by, as you know, an administrative appeal where they would allege that we're not interpreting the zoning ordinance right, that indeed that type of facility is allowed in B4. So it would be a two-part appeal. Yes, Mr. Town. Would that constitute a zone change in there? No, no, it would not constitute a zone change. It would simply be an interpretation issue, an administrative appeal. Because of the zoning impediments, we cannot support option number three. Option number four, request a zone change and or text amendment. Those options are always available to any person or group that feels that the zoning of a particular property is not right or not appropriate, or if they feel that the zoning ordinance doesn't treat a particular use within that zone appropriately. Those options are always on the table. There's a lot of uncertainty in how that would work out. I have no idea at this point if the current occupants are even interested in going down that road. So for those reasons, four is in there for discussion, and we really can't encourage you to go with option four through working with the current occupants. That brings us to option five, which is the simplest and most direct and the one that we think really gets at the issue the best way, and that's to simply revoke the conditional use permit. One thing that I should have mentioned about Options 3 and 4 is that even if you do go with Option 5, that doesn't preclude the current occupants from trying Option 3 or Option 4. The only difference with Option 3 would be that rather than amending the conditional use, they would be asking for a new conditional use for exactly what they've been doing for the last year or so. Again, that would have to be accompanied by an administrative appeal application because of the zoning issues with the B4 zone. We have four findings for option number five that are outlined in detail here. Finding A gets to the heart of the matter, focusing on that condition number one. That keeps popping up, exactly what you all proved compared to what they're doing. finding B gets more into the zoning the B4 limitations relating to community centers and residential uses finding C gets at the intensity of the use issue which I talked about before and then finding D gets to the parking agreement which they haven't complied with I suspect that many of you at this point are thinking, well, if you go with option five, where are these people going to go? That's a very legitimate question. The next overhead. In answer to that question, obviously I can't tell you specifically. But in general, I can tell you that the zoning ordinance is very accommodating with regard to where community centers are allowed. Again, a residential component to a community center is allowed if it's for a social purpose. And if you look at the definition, that's how a community center is defined. Right in here, it talks about a social purpose. The term homeless shelter or overnight homeless shelter is not used in the zoning ordinance. So this is the use that we fall under to see how it's regulated by the zoning ordinance. So what we've done is broken it down into where community centers are allowed by right as a principal permitted use and allowed as a conditional use. These first ten zoning categories are community centers allowed by right. If we can scroll up a little bit. Excuse me. Excuse me just a moment. I hear someone interrupting. If you would please, I would ask you not to do it. If we have to have you removed, we will. Thank you. So there's actually several zones, 10 total, that do allow community centers by right. How about conditional uses? There's four zones that allow community centers that is conditional use, which would require y'all's review and approval if it was to be established. In terms of acreage, the total acreage for all of these zones, if you clump them together, comes to over 5,000 acres in Fayette County. acreage of these four zones comes to over 13,000 acres. And what we've done is to visually get a handle on that, and I'm going to go over and flip this map. In this map, we've clustered all the different zones into one color just for visual effect. We didn't want to break them down into each zone. It would just be too complicated. Are you finished with the overhead? So I wanted to turn some light on. I can't see. Yeah, go ahead. I'll flip all the lights on. We mentioned the 10 zones that allow community centers as a principal permitted use. Those are shown in orange here, these splotches. You can see they're distributed throughout the county, even some in the downtown core area, which I'm sure is where their priority area would be for relocation if we had to do that of a homeless shelter. Well, let me ask you a question before you go on. In that area there, is there another property that's available for this particular project? Well, Mr. Stout, I can't answer that right now. But when we get into a little more explanation of option number five, where we have recommended that even if you all do revoke the conditional use, we give them a six-month window to do exactly that kind of research. Hopefully not on our own, but with us as partners, so that we can ferret out some of the details and some of the complications and some of the creative things that might be able to be done. For example, what happened with the Eastern State Hospital, those kind of swapping kind of deals. But anyway, the total acreage is 5,173 acres for these orange splotches where community centers allowed as a principal permitted use by right. The red colors are those four zones where it's allowed as a conditional use. And the total acreage for that comes to 13,169 acres. So in general, there's a lot of land out there that's available for use as a community center. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that all that's available for their particular needs and their particular use. Clearly, that's not the case. But if you can find a desirable property in here that's a very tiny percentage of the total rent that's available, then that might be a good place to start. Before you go on, I thoroughly understand what you're saying. But the average everyday person wouldn't have any knowledge about how to go about seeking that type of situation out without help. I just don't think I wouldn't if I was sitting in just an everyday person's position and realizing just what you told me that that much exists out there, how in the world would I go about securing, finding, soliciting that type of situation? And I think partly here is where we have an issue, is that if they're not in compliance, and this board deems that to be, and we do give that window to seek, where will they go find it? And how do they go find it? I think that's going to be a question that needs to be addressed. That pretty much leads to exactly my closing comments, which I'm getting pretty close to, is that we would hope that they wouldn't try to do that alone. We would hope that they'd try to do that in partnership with local government. where we could sit down at the table together and go through this. And the Division of Planning is committed to stepping up our efforts more than a notch or two to help them with this. Well, I didn't say that to mean that you wouldn't help. I'm just saying that most people don't understand where to go to seek that type of help. Okay, Mr. Statt, you stole my thunder. I didn't mean to do that. I have to modify my closing comments. All right. This is a tough situation for everybody. The only way I've been able to get through this with any comfort level at all is to know that there's a better way to go about this. This butting heads over zoning is not going to help anybody in the long term. Does local government need to step up and do more? Yes. Division of Planning is ready to do that. Does there need to be at least some recognition on the part of the groups and churches, other organizations that have this noble mission of ministering to the needs of the homeless? Does there need to be some recognition on their part that there are, yes, some zoning laws that need to be compliant with? Well, yeah, that would be a great start. The local government and those groups should be partners in this, not adversaries. And look at us here today, battling it out. It's not a good long-term solution. So how do you translate all this into a decision that you all have to make today? And I think the only way to get there is by focusing on the long-term, not the short-term. In the short-term, if this facility has to relocate, there might be some hardship. It depends on how successful we are in that six-month window of finding a better place. We're recommending that you proceed with option number five, but I do think it's very important to give that six-month window of time to work together, hopefully, in partnership. That's all for me. I'd be happy to answer any immediate questions right now, and otherwise I'll be hanging out over there. questions for you before we sit down please all right then what we're going to do we're going to bring up the representatives for those folks who are in opposition to this is their spokesperson for that group is there a spokesperson for the group who is in opposition to this proposal so you would like to come up and speak the one that are in opposition are you supporting or are in opposition oh no i'm representing the i'm in opposition of the uh revocation uh then i i would um hear you after a while okay thank you we have a lot of petitions up here that are in opposition to the board granting this hearing this revocation hearing and granting the condition we use those of you who are have put your name on this list they're in opposition is there anyone here wants to speak to this yes sir you may come forward sir I think people are confused about what you're saying. Are they in favor of continuing the Catholic Action Center? No, they're not. Those of you who are in favor of continuing the Catholic Action Center, and the church. Those of you who are here in that favor, please raise your hand. So you don't need to be up here then. So you may sit down. You didn't tell me to come to an opposition first. But you can sit down. We'll get to you just a second. Those of you who are in favor of this appeal being revoked, please raise your hand. That's what I want to see. Now, those of you who want to come up and speak, please come forward. One at a time. And if you'd give your name, please, we will let you speak. My name is Mark Spears. I'm here representing Mount Honolulu Baptist Church at 1008 Delaware Drive. My pastor would have loved to have been here today, but he was out of town on a previous engagement that he had. And some of our church members would love to have come, but they couldn't get an excuse from work. All I can tell you is what I've seen in the past year of increased activity around our building. We have a day school, and we operated recess on the northwest side of the school. We have traffic coming through from the properties across the tracks where we're located at, on Sherman, Bassett, and those streets over there, and Lincoln and Owsley, and we know all the neighborhood people over there and they know us. Well, because a lot of strange people to us started accessing the property for shortcuts that we did not know, and because of cursing, because of alcoholic beverages being carried through the property and being partaken of, and we asked to stop, and cursing was, we moved the children's playground area to the other side of the building where we have no traffic. We have since, we've run three buses on Sunday mornings picking up people to bring them to church. We have to go out every Sunday morning now and early and police the buses to get people that are sleeping on the buses off. We have to go out and clean up, I'm sorry to say this, but alcoholic beverage containers and condoms at times off the buses before we take them out and run them in the mornings. because of people being disgruntled, whoever it is doing it. They have sprayed our fire extinguishers on our buses, and we've had to remove them now and make sure that they go in each time the buses are ran. We have three vans at our church. One of them has been broken into. The windows were broke. We taped the windows up. The tape repeatedly gets cut, and we have asked people not to be sleeping on the buses. We have seen defecation on the property and on the streets. and the increased activity is not good for our children to see, and it's just not good for the whole neighborhood. Thank you, sir. Next. Next. Your presentation is a little different, isn't it? We're not going to hear the same thing from you, are we, about the church? Are you speaking? Showing up my God. Good. First of all, I would like to say that my name is B.W. Blanton, Jr. I am durable power of attorney. In fact, for Mr. Fred M. Hale, who I have submitted a copy of the power of attorney with the petition. I also submitted one to you back in the fall when I was here speaking. I still have the same laryngeal cancer, and I'm winning a battle against it, and I'm celebrating, not complaining, but apologize for my voice. Judy Ramsey, I support you. I think you do a great job with your resources that you have available to you. I think that you have a great mission to help those people who are in need of your help, and I support that. I support the Salvation Army. I support Goodwill. I support all the different agencies that are involved in that. Now, with that being said, I believe that supporting a community should go so far. And it shouldn't go so far as to be a detriment to the surrounding community. I believe you've got to help people. I believe you've got to do what you've got to do, but not at the risk of tearing a neighborhood apart with many different things. Like just been mentioned, I've cleaned up my share of defecation too. I remain committed, as I said before, to helping you relocate. I would volunteer to be on the mayor's task force or whatever to help you find a better suited facility for what you're accomplishing. And that brought to mind when you said something about how would a regular person go about finding a place more suitable. I think you do have to work with government. You have to work with business leaders who may have vacant properties. And I think in this particular case, I see an abandoned apartment complex someplace with multiple buildings, have classrooms, have medical clinics, have housing, have counseling, prayer, whatever. I think that those would fit well onto an abandoned apartment complex property. And you have offered to do work before on these properties, and I'm sure that someone would be happy to have that help to improve the property. I worry about the safety of having that many people in the building. Every time I think about that, I think about my experience as a former newsman and what happened at Beverly Hills Supper Club. that was not in compliance with fire codes and that kind of thing. And I think we also need to acknowledge that I have three minutes of that. Sir, I'm just going to make it real short and tell you that I hope that you and your Board of Adjustment will support the findings of your staff and will enforce the RCOs as they are committed to be. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Please try to hold your comments to the three minutes, please. Good afternoon. My name is Carol Clements, and I live on Dallas Avenue. My main concern is my grandchildren live with us. They were abused grandchildren. And they have seen a lot of things at my house that they shouldn't be seeing out of this. Policemen resting some of these people in our driveway. They can't come out of the house. They've even been asked for some of their toys or scooters and other things, so I don't let them out. My children can't come out and play no more. Coming from abusive situations, which I'm sure there's a lot of people in this center that have been through the same thing, but right now I'm concerned about a four-year-old and a six-year-old. And they're scared to go out anywhere in my yard. They're scared to leave the house by themselves, which they can't leave out of my yard. But it's really bad when they ask me if the policeman's coming to get them again. because they've seen them arrested in my driveway. And I have to send them in because the policeman asked me to send my kids in, but they've already seen it. So I'm asking that this place be moved. I'm all for charity. I bought these same people breakfast at McDonald's because I take my grandkids in there every morning. I have to be to work at 6. They're walking my streets. They're asking me for money. They're scaring my grandkids. And I don't, I'm not against any of this. It's just we need to find a place for them that they can be and not have the sex offenders that are in this congregation. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, sir. Three minutes, sir. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, members of the board, My name is Ed Clark, and I've lived at Delaware Avenue for the past 25 years. Recently, when problems arose with the community end at 824 Winchester Road, a neighborhood association was formed, and I was named president. I'm here today to speak on behalf of myself and my neighbors and ask the Board of Adjustment to revoke the usage permit for this said property, first issued to inner-city ministries and later transferred to Emanuel Apostle, Holistic Church, and the Catholic Action Center. The original permit in March 2010 was for a church with no mention of a homeless center at the time, and the neighborhood residents were sent notice and no one objected. After a year went by, the permit was transferred to the present tenants. In April 2011, the doors were opened and the place began operating as a homeless shelter seven days a week from 7 p.m. at night until 8 a.m. the next morning. At 8 a.m., the doors were locked and homeless were turned out into the streets and the surrounding neighborhood. Hand handling on the streets became a constant problem. Older residents were afraid to walk the McDonald's or Speedway for fear of confrontations with these homeless individuals. Parents were afraid for their children to play in their yards. As of yesterday, five registered sex offenders were using this address as a permanent home. Zoning regulations prohibit this address being used as a residence. A few years ago, Jenny Ramsey and the Catholic Action Center tried to buy a house on Detroit Avenue as a residence for five sex offenders. A meeting was held with the neighborhood residents, Sheriff Kathy Wood, Jenny Ramsey, and the Catholic Action Center. Residents objected to such a home in the neighborhood with 50 or 60 children and a couple of residents who themselves were victims of sexual abuse as children. Contrary to the wishes of the Catholic Action Center, the home was not allowed, and the person who was loaning the money to buy the home decided not to furnish the money because of public reaction. We were united then in our efforts to protect our neighborhood, and we stand more united today. Our neighborhood is no different from any other in the city. The safety of our elderly and young children come first. What gives Jenny Ramsey and the Catholic Action Center the right to put our young and older residents within harm's reach? With the economy in the shape as it is, the homeless population is growing more each day and deserves to be dealt with. Cities, state, and federal governments need to work together to find some answer to this growing problem that doesn't infringe on the rights of others. In closing, we, the members of the Delaware Area Neighborhood Association, ask the Board of Adjustments to revoke the usage permit for 824 Winchester Road as it stands today and never again allow this property to be used for any purpose that does not comply with B-4 zoning. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Is there anyone else? Anyone else? Mr. Chairman, if there is no one else, I'll make three minutes' worth of commentary. Yes, sir. I'm Bill Farmer. I represent the 5th Council District, which includes this neighborhood as well as this facility. I've never been so happy to have only three minutes to speak. There's a tangible need for homeless shelters and people who are homeless to be dealt with in our city. The mayor and the council realize that, and the mayor is working very hard on a new task force to help with that. I think the principle that you all are being asked in your leadership role today to consider is the validity of all of our zoning ordinances and how they're interpreted and how they're used. Many times when clients or petitioners appear in front of council, they want to extrapolate what would happen to the urban service boundary, what happens to the farms, or what happens inside the urban service boundary when we make certain kinds of decisions. We make those decisions consistently within a framework. What this neighborhood is asking you to do today is to continue to make those decisions within the framework, and I'm going to endorse their petition for you all to make a finding related to, and I regret to say this, the revocation of the conditional use permit as outlined in No. 5. There's a fairness issue involved in what is fair for this neighborhood, which is a viable Lexington neighborhood that is adjacent to many amenities in Lexington and shares a real sense of community. As it stands, many of these fine property owners have lost the use of their front porch, their front yard, and their sidewalk because of the intense use of the property in relation to what was actually conditionally permitted for it to be used for. I would encourage you to take your time to make the right decision and know that the council office, as well as the, really I would think the entire government, would be at the disposal of this entity during the time frame in which we would help them look for a new location that would properly help those that they are trying to help, as well as give back the neighborhood to those who have enjoyed it for so many years. Thank you for your work. I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? If not, we will hear from the representative on the support side over there, please. before i before you start are you having anyone to speak on your side as well i probably have uh mr ramsey and and brother mcdonald and they do understand that we're going to enforce the three minutes right yeah and y'all look i mean it's just out i was wondering if i could have additional time. I mean, the... Yes, sir. They had additional time. Yes, sir. I think there's some background that has to be shared here with the board. And to have this issue, the way it's been presented, just pop up that this was going to be a homeless shelter is not exactly accurate. These people, Brother McDonald, Well, it wasn't the manual at that time, but there has been discussions since January about opening this as a shelter. For example, on January 11, 2011, Vincent Hickey, may I? Yes, please. Vincent Hickey walked through the area and found concerns about the Winchester Road address. That email from Mr. Hickey was sent to the building owner and building inspection. so as early as January 11, 2011 they knew there was going to be expanded use for this A24 Winchester now if you look forward on January 14th from Joseph Bryant of Building Inspector Mr. Bryant says Mr. Bryant sends an email to the Catholic Action Center and in that email he says that the news of a permanent homeless shelter reached our office today and gave us some reason to pause. We always set up a meeting to discuss this with Jesse and Jenny. If office agrees that meeting, that the new ministry does not change the use of the church as far as the building code or zoning application, then we can issue a permit for the new stairs. The issue for the permit was, I mean, the issue for the permit for the new stairs was issued. So as early as January, building inspectors knew that they were claiming to use this as a permanent homeless shelter. Yet there was never any response to say this would not be an acceptable use. In fact, just the opposite. They let them use, they approved the building for the stairs, building permit for the stairs. Now, as far as the parking, as far as the issue with the parking, there are four spots, as Mr. Marks said, four spots may have been lost. But there has been arrangements by the center with Milner electric across the street, which would allow them at least 25 spots across the street from A24. So then if you look at issue number five, which was the parking issue, the parking issue has been eliminated. So it brings us to issue number one. The issue number one and what is this facility going to be used for? So we've shown you now, as far as January 14th, they knew that this was going to be used for homeless shelter. On March 22nd, Vincent Hickey, again, gives them permission to have 75 beds, 75 downstairs, and 40 upstairs. on March 22nd. On March 28th and 29th, Building Inspection visits the center, visits 824, and tries to say they were not aware that it was going to be used as a shelter or for meals. Obviously, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. When they sent the revocation out between March 28th and 29th until when they sent the revocation out on the intent to revocate on April 20th to sit at the floor of the hearing, there was no discussions between the building inspector and planning, zoning, anybody concerning the use of A24. What this really boils down to is what everyone has said here, Mr. Marks, all the speakers, is that we have an underserved population. And it's great now to come in 2012 and say, well, we need to address this problem. Congress passed legislation in 1980 to assist the homeless. not 2010. So it's been 30 years that this community has not addressed adequately addressed the issue of the homeless. They have left it to private individuals to address the issues of the homeless. And those private individuals have taken it by the horns and have attempted, not eliminated the problem of the homeless but have tried to make it a little bit easier for the homeless. Any other... Oh, yes, sir. So are you telling me that this is no longer a church, but it is a facility for the homeless? No, no, no, sir. No, sir. I'm saying that part of this church's mission is to provide these services to an underserved population. I think everyone recognizes the significance of this issue. This issue is the question of, basically boils down to, what is a church? What is the mission of a church? we have taken the Catholic Action Center and well, it's not interesting to break through but the Apostolic Church has taken their ministry to these people since the beginning of the Constitution There has been a separation of church and state. This is the question that's presented to you in the Board of Judgment. Should the definition of a church as supported by the Board of Judgment, Mr. Marks and his staff, override the mission of the church of these people on 824? So it's a big issue. But the bigger issue is, that's the legal issue. But the social issue is, our city isn't serving these people. And we've got an opportunity to serve these people, and it's got to continue to serve these people. The mayor, yes, the mayor wants to have a task force. When's that going to take place? When is it going to start? My understanding is 120 people want to join the task force. You get 120 people in the room, they're not going to agree on anything except what the day is. It's going to take years before we get a decision on an affirmative program to deal with our homeless population. And until then, it's private citizens and private agencies have to take that burden. And they've been doing it. And there's a lot of people in here that are glad they're doing it. But to close it down on one issue, the parking is resolved. We've shown you that. To close it down on one issue, on the meaning of their mission as a church, it's not right. It's right. So we would ask you to overrule or deny the revocation and allow the program to continue. I'm not standing here to say there can't be dialogue between everyone to make things better or make things worse. I mean, not make things worse, to make things better. I mean, there can be plenty of dialogue, and we welcome that dialogue. But where has that dialogue been for the last 30 years? we need the service that they provide and I just hope that you look at the bigger picture that there's more people out there that aren't even being served by this program that needs assistance but at this point we're serving who we can when we can with what we got and that's all we have and to close it down you're leaving a mission not fulfilled and a lot of people out of services that are in desperate need of services. So thank you. Before you sit down, I want to ask you a couple questions. Give me your last name again. Dove. Dove? Yes, sir. Dove. I don't think anybody in this community or anybody on this board or anybody in this government wants to see people displaced. I don't think anybody wants to see that. I personally don't want to see it happen. But I'm sitting here listening to you talk to me and talk to this board, and you're telling me that it's okay to violate a zoning. I'm sorry to allow Rob to? In essence, you're telling me that the zones don't matter. That's what you're trying to tell me. And I can't really buy that. But not saying that I don't have empathy or sympathy for what you're here for, because I do. But by the same token, when we try to understand what is right relative to what is wrong and what you can do and what you're permitted to do under the law, under the regulations. It would seem to me that when this church came before this board back several months ago, that they should have laid it all out on the table, all of it, relative to their intentions, relative to what they would like to see done within this particular mission. that did not do that. They did not do that. And it left us in a position to approve something that we misinterpreted, so they say, that this was going to be a Sunday go-to-meeting church. And it has not been that. Well, I guess I would respond by saying I don't think there was any misleading or attempt to mislead. I think we showed you in January where there was talk. The city knew that this was going to be used as a homeless shelter. There was no discussion to anyone that maybe you should go back and get your charter, your permit amended. There was nothing. This is a tough call. I'm not saying, I believe everybody in this room is committed to fairness and committed to serving the population of Fayette County. The reality is, we have not. And the reality is, this is becoming an issue of a mission of a church versus a zoning regulation. Absolutely. And what we're saying, if we need to get into that issue, if we need to get into that issue, then with all due respect to the Board of Adjustments, freedom of religion will take precedent over the zoning. Well, I hear the applause and I do understand that. But, you know, that rationale just does not wash. You're telling me that somebody in government knew that you were going to have a homeless shelter there. Who knew that? Who in government knew that? Don't tell me Mr. Hickey, because Mr. Hickey is the fire chief. I would say Joseph Bryant of the building inspector, if you look at January 14, 2011, where it says the news of the permanent homeless shelter. He knew it was January 14, 2011. Joe Bryant. Do you have someone else that you want to bring up to speak on their behalf? If there's no other questions, I could bring up Ms. Ramsey and Brother McDonald just to tell you a little bit more of what goes on at 824. And I appreciate your... And I understand I appreciate what you're doing. but by the same token I think somewhere down the line there has to be another answer for this I don't know what it is I don't know but we're going to discuss some things and talk about these things here and see what can be worked It's all we can ask, Chair It's all we can ask is open discussion try to get this problem resolved but I don't think the problem is going to be resolved by immediate closure of a service area I hope we can find some way to accommodate what this project is truly all about. Yes, sir. Maybe we can and maybe we can't, but we'll look and see. Anyone else who wants to speak before I? Can I ask Mr. Dubb? We have a question here. Mr. Glover? Mr. Dubb, before you leave, just to establish some of the facts that Mr. Marks laid out, I just want to make sure that I understand what the current situation is. Is this in a B4 zoning? No. No. It's not been B4 zoning as far as I know. I mean, this area that the structure is in is in a B4 zone? I believe so, yes, sir. Okay. And in a B4 zone, a church is a conditional use. Is that right? Correct. That's the way it seems to be, yes, sir. Okay. And in connection with that, the church made application for use of this property as a church, right? Yes, sir. And they were granted conditional use for the property. And we still concede, yes, they were granted conditional use. Yes, sir. Okay. And the conditional use required that these five conditions be a part of that condition. In other words, it's not a free use. It's free and open and unrestricted. It is subject to conditions because that's what the zoning law requires, right? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. There were conditions. And the conditions were that it be operated as a church in accordance with the application. and the application said that the church would be providing Sunday morning services and Thursday morning services. Is that right? Yes, sir. I believe that's what the application said. And nothing in the application said anything about a homeless shelter or overnight accommodations or anything like that, did it? Not the application did not, but I think it gets back, I mean, with all due respect, Mr. Clever, it gets back to the mission of the church. What we think the church's mission is and what the Board of Adjustments or what the city thinks the mission of the church is, is two different definitions, obviously. We feel that that part of putting the money into fixing it up, into making a homeless shelter, which everyone knew, they got the building permits, they got the building inspection, everyone knew that was the intent in January on that they were going to make this into a homeless shelter. Well, if everyone knew that that's what the intent was, why wasn't that in the conditional use? Why wasn't it part of it? Well, that was the conditional use. I really can't answer that. I'm sorry. Mr. Ramsey or Mr. McDonnell can. I'm sorry. Okay, but what I'm saying is it could have been part of that conditional use application when it was first applied, or they could have requested additional conditions or something like that before it got to this board right here? I think a lot of things could have happened before it got to this board from all parties. However, today we are from the board, and I think we will stick by the fact that this is our mission, this is our church, this is the, this is. Excuse me just a moment. This is what. Excuse me just a moment. We've asked you all not to interrupt. We've given you an opportunity to speak. We ask you to please respect the people that are talking. Thank you. Okay, I'm just saying that we on the board, we can't guess what the mission of a church is. And so we can only go by what's in the application, what's on the application. And if it changes, it's really up to you all. It's not up to the government to anticipate what the uses are going to be. And the reason for that is to give proper notice to other people in the neighborhood about what's going to be used for this church. And so the question really to me is, it seems to me that the people in the neighborhood haven't been given proper notice that the mission of the church has expanded to include these additional things. And I think that's what's being objected to today. That's why the people are here objecting to the, or in support of the revocation. And that's why Mr. Marks and the government have presented the case for that purpose. So that's, I mean, as I understand it, that's what I interpret that we're here for today. Well, Mr. Glover, I would say we were certainly, if that is the position, we will certainly amend our request. And if there's a public notice requirement before that is approved, then we will comply with that. We just feel that the drastic action of revocation should be the last resort, not the first resort. And if you look at the five options that have been presented, revocation and closure is their first option. I mean, if there's something that we could do to resolve it short of that, we would certainly do that. Have you seen, have you looked at option number five in Mr. Marcus's presentation? Did you take a look at that? The option number five, I did, but I think. He talks about, he offers in option number five what he calls a very generous six months time period for the relocation process. He didn't have to do that, as I understand it. I think Mr. Marks certainly considers he is considered. We understand that. He thinks it's six months. Yeah, it's considerably generous. But we've been finding this homeless problem since 1980. And we've got nowhere except. Not at this location, not on this application, not with these conditions. No, but if you look at what he says, if he looks in his concluding sentence in the next to the last paragraph on the last page, what constitutes a church will impact houses of worship that may seek conditional use and approval. That's what it boils down to is why is what this church, once it's designated as a church, What it does within its four walls is it's subject to being governmentally regulated. Now, six months would not, six months is, it may be thought to be generous, but it's not. I mean, we want to work with the city, but we can't just do a six-month and then close down. Thank you. Is there anyone else that desires to speak? Yeah. Just a couple of minutes. I'm Elder James McDonald, pastor of Emmanuel Epstein at Church of Zion. And I can now be, I have learned something sitting here. The wisdom of our forefathers who were in government separating church and state. because there's so many people that are in the midst of our communities that don't understand what a church does and what a church is supposed to be about. We live and govern ourselves according to the scriptures. The Bible dictates to us what we're supposed to be about. No government or no one else can tell us what we're supposed to be doing. Our main concern was the concern of Jesus Christ who were the needy. The Pharisees didn't understand why. He would dwell with the needy as opposed to the rich and to those that were religiously affluent. I follow him in the sense that I feel that as a minister, my job is to help those who cannot help themselves. That's where I've been placed. As far as this regulation and what you're all doing, I don't have a clue. But a church, we have plenty of church going on in that. A church is where God is. And we take God to the people at the community end. We've had prostitutes who have been saved. We've got alcoholics and drug addicts who have quit using. The work of God cannot be understood by the mentality of man. We're out there trying to change people's lives. We're going to them, not requiring them to come to us. And so the Catholic Action Center and the Emmanuel Apostolic Church of Zion is partner together to help those people come out of the conditions that they're in. In the meantime, they have to have their needs met. Ralph. Yes, sir. I bless you for what you do. Thank you. And respect to you for what you do. But the position we're in deals with regulations. I understand that. I have nothing to do with that. And my question to you is this. Wouldn't it be more amenable to you in trying to dissolve this situation where you are in the wrong zone to reach out and try to get this government to help you to relocate into another facility? My concern with that is I have to trust in man. I trust in God. I understand that. All right. Whatever y'all decide to do, see, I am one who obeys the laws of the land, as commanded by God. Whatever you decide to do, I'm going to go with it. I have to. But I'm going to continue the work. If you can work something out, that's fine. Again, let me say this. I am a minister. What I do is preach and teach the gospel. This, what you're doing now, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. regulations and all this thing. Only thing I understand is church and state needs to be separated. If y'all want something else, that's fine. I'm through with it. Alright. That'd be between you and the lawyers. God bless y'all. I'm Jenny Ramsey. I live at 322 Ridgeway Road, Lexington, Kentucky. I'm co-director of Catholic Action Center and co-director of the Community Inn. I want to clear up a few things quickly that have to do with timing. I think this is the important thing. It's easy to say now, let's trust that we can work together and get something done, but we started working together in January of 2011. Jesse Morris was the pastor of the one that you all granted the, what do you call it? What's the name? The conditional use permit to, okay? Jesse Morris came to the Catholic Action Center offices in December of 2010. You all granted his first permit on 6-1-10. In December, he came to us and said, I need to have a homeless shelter there. We've seen what you all did with the World Equestrian Games shelter with Central Christian. Would you consider partnering with me? We want to have a place that we feed the folks downstairs and we shelter the folks upstairs. The owner of the building can attest to this. It had been said from the very beginning. Now, what happened to planning, what was said to them, we can't attest to. But the owner of the building, who took a chance on the inner city ministry to be allowed to open a shelter, a church which believes in being also feeding and housing. Never question that what Jesse was asking for was a church. Our question always has to do with, isn't that what a church is? But go back to this timing, because I think that's where you all really, you know, I appreciate all the work you all have had to do in this. I tried to talk to them in February about let's not do this legally. Let's work this out. I will say that. I said, we'll have to have our lawyers come. I said, I can't keep doing it. I'm 61 years old. Religious land use was upheld for the Catholic Action Center. Your attorneys will tell you that that happened back in 2001 through 2003. It took us two years. We didn't want to have to do that again because it's already been recognized here. And some good attorneys had told us that many times. Back to the timing, though. I think this is key for you all. I mean, maybe it didn't, but it seems to me it is. Mr. Mays, who owns the building, wanted it to be some kind of ministry, and he gave the inner-city Baptist ministry over 14 months to get code enforcement problems that necessary repairs had to be made to get those up to date, to get the utilities on, for one thing, to get his church up and going. You all gave the permit. Mr. Mays paid for him to be able to go through this process. You gave him the permit 6-1-2010. In December, he was not able to continue paying utilities. There were frozen pipes. We couldn't do it in December when he first came. I was very excited to hear a church that wanted to be a shelter. I mean, that's our passion, is to take care of these people who are left out in our city. But we have gone through every step legally. I promise you, we wouldn't have had our folks invest over $90,000 in that building. Going back to January 2011, when we had the first walkthrough, I have all the information of the emails, everything is documented. Conversations aren't. Emails are. But Pastor Morris could not make the payments. He could not do the repairs. Code enforcement, Martha Alexander, isn't that her name? Martha Alexander. Martha, one of the building inspector enforcement folks. I mean, she came on that first time and we were looking at it and said, Jenny, do you realize what we're saying has to be done? It has to be painted outside. You have to put on new stairs. You're going to have to have all this plumbing and electric done, et cetera. You remember I told you three minutes. All right. I think I've got some important info here. If you'll bear me just a couple of minutes. Anybody else over there? Will somebody give me their time? We've got lots of folks. We've got about 30 people signed up, and you don't need to hear from all of them. Can I have a couple of people's time? Okay, I've got two people's time. Let me try it. All right. I just think this is real important in this case. Okay, so 14 months he had to get it up and going. He came to us and asked, will you please do this? We were excited. We'd done the wage shelter. We wanted to do it. That's our mission. Our ministry was to be able to, instead of people sitting on the Catholic Action Center in chairs with a blanket, because we couldn't put air mattresses in there due to fire department regulations. We haven't been able to do that for 13 years, and we didn't do it. A lot of people think we don't follow the regulations, but I have to really let you know we do. so he came we went through we have all these emails um and one of them specifically saying you know it's putting a real buzz up here that you all are talking about putting the the um it was in the paper it was on the news that we were going to turn it into a shelter and we also wanted to turn the upstairs into actual apartments which is how it had been used for the past 15 years for veterans. We weren't allowed to do that. It had a non-compliant use for those 15 years. So we found out we couldn't do that. We found out we had to change windows if we wanted to have any sleeping upstairs. We found out all kinds of things, and we took the things step by step. We could not open the upstairs except for our meetings where we have NA meetings, We have medical. We have one-on-one counseling. All the things that are offered to the folks at night. I'm just talking about from 7 at night to 8 in the morning. I'm talking about the van that brings the people in. Some people do arrive on foot. And then at 8 in the morning, we have vans that take them out. Those can go on foot, though. I'm not going to say that there aren't some that walk away. I'm talking about what goes on there because that's our partnership with Emanuel Apostolic Church. We got Steve Heller and a lot of good volunteers to put in the money. We don't have money. I mean, we don't ask for government grants. We do it all. And we had these folks donate their time and materials and their dollars to this project, knowing we had the approval of the urban county government. We never would have touched it otherwise. I can show you our certificate of occupancy. I can show you our permits. I can show you the e-mails. saying do this, this, and this, and then it will be fine. I can show you the e-mails from the fire department. I'm happy to share any of that with you. I thought they would have already shared all that with you because that's what went on. And they knew we were only going to do downstairs. Fire department said 75 people can be sheltered downstairs. Then we got to the place we need to separate the women from the men. It's going to make such greater dignity. The fire marshal had told us, put in new windows you can do upstairs. We went through these folks again, and I'm going to go to the actual, we can talk about our meeting in February, and I'll be real honest with you. When I got in the mail that Elder McDonald got it first, and then we got a copy of the conditional, of the Emanuel Apostolic Certificate of Occupancy on 3-21-12, we thought, oh, they realized we're not going to have that kind of fight. It isn't going to be a problem. Why else would have we gone forth? We weren't snubbing our nose. I've got all the things that you folks gave us saying it's okay. Yes, it said, according to BOA case, BOA case said it has to be a church. There's nothing, it is a church. And BOA said you have to have parking. We got the new parking from across the street. which was approved by Nancy Marinero. You know, we thought we'd done everything, and we did everything that we were told needed to be done. Two days before you all were having that first revocation meeting, a letter came to us saying we're going to ask the Board of Adjustments to revoke. The thing was dated a week before that. It was mailed a day before the meeting. We've got all that, too. It really does break our trust in how we're trying to operate when we're not even told. So last time we come and we wanted Ed Dove, who has been our attorney the whole time. Yes, we did put off him going and talking because we thought everything's fine. They just gave us our new permit. Everything's cool. We also did not want to get into a legal battle with the city. I'm a citizen of this community. I have been for 31 years. I may absolutely be an advocate for the homeless, but I happen to live in Chevy Chase. I happen to be part of Bill Farmer's constituency, as well as now at the community inn, helping run that. I don't want us to see wasting taxpayer money. I don't want my money wasted. When there is so much that needs to be done to take care of our citizens, and instead we're going to waste the money that's going to have to go into this with lawyers doing their thing. And I hope you all are aware of what happened in Louisville two years ago. I hope you've looked at the religious land use cases. We don't want that fight. We went through it in 2001. We don't want to do it again. We have had two meetings with neighbors. I've got an email from one of the neighbors talking about how much better it is. We switched the way our people were coming to wait on the property. Yes, there could be problems. All the folks who may be over on different streets that are homeless are not because of us. And if they are, we'll go embrace them. Call us. Call the police. You can talk with Commander Pape. He'll tell you how all the calls have gone down since we put security out there at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We have followed and tried to do many things in order to make this work, and we will continue to work at that. And I'm sorry, I have a hard time thinking that our people, and I do hear them say it, they care about these men and women who are left in the streets. You all, it's getting worse, not better. We cannot just say, let's move in six months. We have no money. We ask the goodness of all these businesses to do what they did based on the fact that we had the paperwork from the city. We never hid it. It has been on Channel 27. There was a major article in the newspaper. If anybody tried to, we told them. So if anybody wants to talk about anything that was hidden, I'm sorry, we're not the hiding type. We bring the people out and want everybody to know what's going on. So I wouldn't want to be sitting there. I'm a citizen. I've paid taxes for 31 years here. I love Lexington, Kentucky. And I don't want Lexington, Kentucky to become what it could in this case, which is ridiculed by the rest of the country in the fact that we're closing down in the midst of this economic time, something that really is, they have said, we could do. I don't know. And a church. It's a church. To me, there's nothing greater than church. Yes, I belong to the Cathedral of Christ the King. but I'm much prouder of Emanuel Apostolic Church and the fact that they put themselves on the line, not just to shelter their own, but to shelter what Jesus said right here. I was homeless and you sheltered me. God bless you all. I wouldn't want to have to make this decision, but I'll tell you what, whatever you decide, we're willing to work. I mean, this is my city too. I love this city. God bless you. If you have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer it. I have copies I'd be glad to make for all of you all. didn't come prepared for that but I mean I keep paper so I got it we got it thank you okay now I gave this side an opportunity earlier I gave this side the opportunity early I believe Actually, in terms of the site of where we're sitting or the site of the position? Oh, you. Okay, go ahead, sir. Actually, my name is David Christensen. I live at 4844 Brennan Drive here in Lexington. I'm the director of the Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative. We work with two or three dozen service providers in our town working on issues of those folks that are marginally housed and those folks that are homeless. I really appreciate the presentation from the city today, Mr. Marks There was a lot of detail in it My only concern is that if we get lost in this detail, we're in a real mess I think we need to rise above the detail And we need to look at the larger issue here Any way you cut it, if this revocation is issued And the community is shut down It's going to be seen by the community and by the nation, for that matter, as an attack on homeless individuals and homeless service providers. Our mission as an organization is to work with anybody who will work with us, with all parties, neighborhoods, and shelters, and everybody else, to try to find ways of collaborating to meet the needs of everybody in the community. I would offer my services personally and our services organizationally to do whatever is necessary to come up with some way of collaboratively resolving these issues. I know you five are stuck with your rules and your regulations, but the city needs to recognize that if we're going to be perceived as really wanting to solve a problem and meet everybody's needs, six months is chump change. It is so difficult to get facilities serving homeless folks and poor folks and at-risk folks in our town, or in any town for that matter, that it's not enough time and who is going to pay for it. If you feel compelled to pass this revocation and close this facility down, I recommend the revocation. I would suggest you add to it that it doesn't, six months and good luck to you, but it doesn't shut down until there's someplace else that is provided and the folks that are living there are new from one to the other. Now, either that or we find a way to everyone live with each other in the present setting. But to shut it down is going to get us in a huge mess. As a city, and not to mention the hurt and the harm, this is there. It's running. It's doing much needed work. if we shut it down, we've got to have another solution or else we're going to be seen as a city and a board of adjustment that wants to close down and attack and criminalize homelessness. And I really would regret that we haven't approached it that way in the past, and I'm hoping we can do better in the future. Any hot questions or I'm out of here? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Coach. My name is Ron Davis. I pastor a church on the corner of 7th in Shropshire. A lot of you people wouldn't even go there because they think it's rough and it's bad. But nobody has damaged that church in over 20 years. Nobody's broken our cars. Nobody's broken our windows. It's a rough neighborhood. Our church goes to the end every Tuesday. We've got people driving from Danville, from Richmond. They don't get paid. They do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Me and my wife has had church this morning. It's at the house. And we had church a while ago in here because God was with us. I believe that they're doing a great work at the end. I also do believe that they will apply to the laws of the land. We do follow Jesus. Jesus paid taxes just like everybody else did. He obeyed the laws of their land. He said, render unto Caesar what Caesar belongs to God to God. We have prostitutes sitting on our doorsteps. Matter of fact, right across the street from us, and I don't understand this, we have a gentleman that sells beer, alcohol, and he's got a drive-thru window. and we were sitting on our steps one Sunday morning going to Sunday school and the man's wife killed a man trying to rob her and bullets went into our church but nothing's been done about that these people that live at the inn majority of them are veterans I am a veteran I am a taxpayer some of these people are in that situation and because of the grace of God, we're not there. We've never had that kind of problem. Ten years ago, people lost their homes, their jobs. They had no place to go. Things have changed. It's gotten worse. Hey, I know there's people out there that will pray you. I know there's people out there looking out for handouts. Hey, we had people come to our church, they bring in prescription for drugs. They have no place to go. They sleep in their car. We'll take them down to the pharmacist and we'll pay it for them. We'll take them to a motel and we'll pay for the room. Make sure that the money is going for good use. These people are doing great. I understand about your property. I own property. I don't want nobody to do that. You've got 30 seconds unless somebody else wants to speak. I don't want anybody to mess up my property either. But I think that's why there's law on the land. I think some of these people that come to these inn needs to have a background check on them. And if they are child molesters, they should be put in a separate place. Thank you. God bless you. Tana Fogle, citizen, taxpaying citizen. Life is about change. And what a great opportunity God has given you five to make a difference and to change. Sure, you have statues, but there's nothing that says you can't change them. if they put the right petition in them. I see a David and a Goliath is what I see. Most of the people out here are taxpaying citizens. They're going to vote. They go to congregations that's going to vote. You know, we put people in office. We take people out. You know, I was surprised when Jenny Ramsey was standing up and struggling with names and things. She looked for help, and it wasn't given. That's exactly what homeless people do. They look for help. She was standing up and struggling with that name, And I knew you all knew the name she was talking about. She works with you. But you never helped her. Who other? Anyway, I'm just here to say, you know, it is about change. You all know what's going on in this city. When the equestrian games came, you moved them from, you all didn't, but the city moved them from downtown, put them in a temporary shelter. As soon as the equestrian games was over, the shelter was closed down. So, you know, I found that amazing. I don't know what the statues are. I'm just appealing to your heart and to your Christianity. You know, if there's a way that you can change the statue, if they can rewrite something and you can make it work, make it work. You know, the other solution that I find, the pastor that came up, you know, vandalism happens all over Lexington. It doesn't mean that it's the people from the community end, unless they saw the people from the community end do it. You know, it's just like guilty before you are found innocent. Unless they saw the people do it from the community end, That's the easiest place to point. It was them. So when the pastor was up here, the solution can be, let's go to their church, and if they can open the doors for those same people that live at the community inn to come up and worship with that church, that might be a solution. Maybe he can find space in his basement, and all these good folks sitting back here can welcome them in, and they can do the things that Christ has ordered for them to do. As far as Mr. Farmer, you know, he doesn't just represent these people. He represents his old district. He better remember that. Now, I mean, I'm not attacking you, but there's some people that needs help in his district. And so something has happened to our city government. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure that these fine folks will be praying for them. And that's all I got to say. My name is Corey Dunn and I volunteer at the Catholic Action Center. I grew up on Chestnut Street where it's located. And one, I'd like to say, what is a church? Retorical question because I don't think anybody on this board or anybody in this room is qualified to say that this is a church and that isn't. If you believe that you are serving a higher power, then that's a church. With that being said, and as a Christian, let's see where my little camera goes. Here we go. My clock's ticking, but I know. Jesus, you know, who is the founder of Christianity or what Christianity is based on, said, and I quote from the English Standard Version of the Bible, Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. So if homeless people need help, I believe that this church is doing exactly what Jesus would do. Because in case you guys have forgot, or in case any of the people on Delaware or Detroit or Dallas or any of them other streets try to realize, Jesus was homeless. Jesus Christ was homeless. And excuse me for raising my voice, but I'm very passionate about this because at one point in time, I too was homeless. So I do understand what these group of people are going through. And then if you look at Delaware and Dallas, those aren't very rich streets. The people who live on Delaware and Dallas are probably a few chicks from being poor and homeless themselves. So with that being said, I think that they should remember that because, I mean, it is what it is. I mean, Delaware is not hard. And if people from Delaware and Dallas and whatnot are fussing, then how the heck do you think we're going to move this homeless shelter and the people who are in the homeless shelter that are being serviced by this shelter? We can't move them out of Taze Creek because they already shot that band. We can't send them over sales road. We can't send them Hamburg. Nobody wants to accept the fact that these people need help. But they still need help. Just because you guys don't want them in your neighborhood doesn't mean that they don't need the help. And that's the problem. I think I'm concerned about Delaware and Dallas because they are raising $100 worth of help about homeless people living in their neighborhood. Or being housed in their neighborhood temporarily. However, if you go right down the street from Delaware and Dallas, they have two or three porn shops. But they don't have any complaints about that. They have a strip club. I haven't heard any complaints about that. You have several bars and I haven't heard any complaints about that. Sir, we understand your concern. I still got 35 seconds, sir. So I would like to sum up. If you're talking about elements that don't even concern what this issue is all about. The issue is zoning and church. And my thing is that these people are church. The people are the church. Not the building, the people. So if you have to have a building for the people and they are doing God's work, that makes it a church. So in the Bible it says, give God's thing, season's thing, season's God's thing to God. It says, obey the law of the land unless it is in direct violation of what God says. So with that, I would like to close and I thank you for hearing me. Appreciate it, y'all. Good evening, Mr. Chair and to members of the board. My name is Pastor Everett Hobson. I'm the pastor of Queen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church located on 744 Charles Avenue. Our church has been in existence for over 140 years in that community. Still today, we have over 30, we have 37 children that are in daycare, in childcare on that street. But if you look at the calls that we get from the police department on that street, we have to manage because we have particularly a justice reason from God that tells us what we must do regardless of what's happening around our community. Charles Avenue in that area has been well known for all kinds of criminal activity, but yet the church does what it has to do. And I want you to remember that. It's not about the people in the community. Yes, it is. It's about us trying to understand how important it is for us to love and to help one another. Every day there are beer bottles in my church yard. Every day there are condoms in my daycare area. Every day there are whiskey bottles up and down the street. We understand that that's part of the job that we have to do in relationship to the church. And so, yes, there are policemen on my street. They see people, my children see people get arrested every so often. They understand that there's gunfire sometime in their community. But those members in that community grew up in that community, and oftentimes it's not the individuals who stay there. We understand that. But one thing the church has to do, that it has to take the mandate to make sure that we reach and love everybody. So I'll just simply submit to you. I understand that there are different rules and different regulations that you have to abide by, But I heard somebody say, and I think this is very important, if indeed you see the need to close down that particular facility, you ought to be sure, in my mind, that there is something that must be done before you close the doors. Something must be done. I'm not suggesting that it needs to be closed. I'm just saying to you that we in this community, we have to man up because the problem is not going anywhere. Churches, we have a responsibility too. The churches have to man up, and that's what the pastor did. He manned up. And I think we have to understand that. It is essential that we handle this injustice issue in our community. It is essential. The question is, it lies in your hands. And guess what? Not only will you be held accountable for what you do in relationship to this city, but you're also going to be held accountable from God. Thank you. My name is David Rhodes, and I'm from Richmond, Kentucky. but community elections like this that's so I'm just so thankful so blessed for because we got our been made different organizations help me get jobs and stuff and I recommend it to my friends and stuff from Richmond to come here and you know get a lot of help you know cuz I love to see the election it's like my my city. And, you know, I just hope y'all do the right thing, you know. That's all I got to say. Thank you. My name is Pastor Ann Freeman from 677 Bishop Drive, Lexington, Kentucky. I just want to encourage the neighborhood to have formulated that prayer changes things, people, and situations. And if we all pray together, there's nothing that's too hard for God. Lexington has been blessed inasmuch that God has kept back the tornadoes, and if it was not for the grace of God, we would all probably be homeless. But God has been good to us, and I know it's a tough decision, but when you look at the church, the body of Christ, and what's being done in obedience to the word of God, not overlooking the rules and the regulations of the city, but there's a situation in that needs much prayer, and we're praying. It's a very delicate situation because Lexington don't want to be found in a place where they're regulating what goes on in the churches and things like that, because on Thursdays our church feeds the homeless and whoever. And there's other churches in the city that does likewise. So in this situation, in obedience to the word of God, we, you know, I understand that right now that place provides shelter. I was over there last week. It's nice. It's clean and so forth. And if the community group continue to pray, come together, God can change that situation. He can even provide a better building, a bigger building, in a different location. So as you all have to make the decision and what has already been done, I want you to know you have our prayers. And it's a delicate situation. So just be careful how you handle it. To the councilmen and those that are in that area, if you pray, watch God change things. And we don't have a lot to say with people coming in our yards and things like that with what the lady said, because we expose our kids to everything on TV. We expose them to things that we do in our home. So don't say it's just because of the homeless and these people that's walking the streets. It's more to it than that. But if you go out there with your children, if you go to school with your children, you'll see some of the same stuff going on in the schools. So we allow this facility to be shut down, what's next? When they took prayer out of the schools, what do we have? So as we walk this journey, brothers and sisters, saints and friends, let's walk it in prayer and according to the will of God. Thank you. I'm Rick Foster, a homeless veteran. I'm from Danville, Kentucky. I've been here about three years. I've been off and on chronic homelessness. when I ended up going to community in, I mean, I can understand why. I just don't know what we're becoming. People that can't overcome the addiction, the drink, or the drug problem, where they would go. I know we'd go in at community in, they'd search our pockets, and nothing's allowed to be brought in. But I mean, where would they go because they've got the zero targets at the Hope Center. They'd put you out in zero temperatures even and say, go to Catholic access. Center, it was before CUNY was in. They said, go to Catholic. That's how I ended up there. I've struggled with it. I helped them get Cocaine Anonymous in the Hope Center. It was three and a half years clean. I fell off and I've been struggling with that. I'm trying not to drink and I'm trying to go to my meetings and do what's right. Some people slip. Some people aren't willing and ready to stop what they're doing. They're going to freeze to death out there in the wintertime. I'm concerned about that. And just as far as, you know, I've heard, I think something might have been said or in the paper about accusing, like, sexual harassment, sexual, saying things, you know, that maybe that people have killed you in sexual predators or pedophiles or whatever. And I just want to say to those communities, just protect your children and walk them home from school or take them home in a car. Or if they're on a bus and have somebody waiting for them when they get off the bus, a sexual predator could be anyone, anywhere. And take responsibility for your own children. They're part of you and today's social, moral decay, we need to keep a close eye on our kids. Don't put that responsibility on everybody else. And that's where I'll have to say. Hello. Giving honor to the state of Kentucky, Lexington. What's your name, sir? I'm sorry. My name is Chief. From my head last night on a tree, I was looking for a place to sleep next to a freeway, and I woke up in somebody's backyard with a pig and a sheep. I wanted to say that the Community Inn is a very good establishment, and they've tried to apply by every rule that's been sent to them, so you keep sending your rules and regulations. I think the only thing that they neglected to do was find out how many people in Lexington and have been through the community end. And as of speaker number one, if there's someone sleeping on your bus in your church, you just send them to the community end, give them the address, send them over to the community end, even if his name is Jesus. And for speaker number two, if people that are at a community end got cancer, they are disabled, they come there because they've got no other place to go, Speaker number three, I was abused when I was a kid. I'm no different than your kids, but I have no place to go, and certain places will not accept me because of my condition. I think if you close down the community end, you'll be turning out the lights to a lot of folks in Lexington. Thank you for your time, and have a good day. I wanted to give the community in an award of excellence. I made it myself, so I thank you all. Do you think we need to have her to propone it? Is there anything I... Yes, sir. My name is Kent Mays. I own the building at 824 Winchester Road. I appeared originally for the conditional use permit, and it was granted. You all have already granted it as a church. Your problem now is dealing with it's too successful. It was okay when it was 30, but now that it's successful, you all have to do something with it. And Mr. Farmer was the councilman when it was approved. Good luck on your decision. Thank you. I think it is exactly what it was envisioned when it was applied for. Exactly. Thank you. Is there anything from the legal side of the street over there you would like to comment on, please? Hold it just a moment, please. This will be brief. I'm Charles Dousher. I live out on the south end of town, but I was raised Catholic, and I support what Jenny Ramsey and them are doing over there. And I heard Option 5 saying that it would be given a six-month window, and that puts it in December, which is about the worst time in the world to be thinking about putting out the homeless. So the gentleman's comment, who said, you know, make sure that they've got a place to go to, I think that that needs to be kept in mind if that's an option that you're thinking about going with. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you. I would say that if you have questions, I'm available here to answer them. But, I mean, as far as just a general statement, if you have any questions about the law or anything that any of the parties have said about the law, I'll be happy to answer. I think what I want to do, I want to take about a three to five minute break, and I want to speak to some of the staff up there, please. Excuse me, Chair. Yes. I was wondering if the supporters of this community in are finished with their testimony. There's a woman at the podium, and I wasn't sure. Yes, ma'am. I'm Lena Cornett. Would you pull that mic down, please? You can talk a little. There you go. Ms. Cornett. I'm Lena Cornett, and I have a house on Dallas Avenue, and my son lives there. And I have grandchildren going, and I'm very concerned about people that's coming in there with drunks. And my son's house has been broken into, and it's dangerous. It's not worth having these children maybe raped or something like that with these sex offenders. Do they check out these sex offenders to see or fill any people before they bring them into their shelter? I believe in helping someone. I'm a Christian, and I believe in feeding them and housing them. But I think they've got six months to find a place and take it out of our neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Marshall Garland, in just three sentences, the economy is about to crash, and some of the people here are going to be out on the streets. And just think about that. before we call for a break does anyone else desires to speak you've already had your chance I was not aware someone else you've already had your opportunity sir anyone else I'm Rebecca Blair and I live on Detroit Avenue. And I just want to say that I no longer can walk my dog around the block. I just stay on my street now. That's all I'm going to say. And I'm not the only one that has fears. Hi, my name is Diane Cahill. I live at 534 Grantchester, citizen obviously of Lexington, follower of Jesus Christ. I was going to sit still until the last comment. I volunteer at the community inn on a regular basis. I'm never fearful. It's always a blessing to me. It helps me to realize that sometimes we all take for granted some of the things we do have. And so when you see someone in a position that just all of their possessions may be in a paper bag, it really brings it all to heart. I've seen more of the gospel lived out in that place, on that building at 824 Winchester Road, than I have in some churches on Sundays. When I was preparing to come down here, I had a recollection of, at a former church where I was attending, it was a smaller church and it was cold, and they tried to open the basement up for homeless folks. We had mattresses and pillows and blankets. The neighbors went ballistic. In fact, there were threats to blow up the church. The pastor had threats on his life. And these are from people who profess to be Christians. And so in thinking about, okay, well, if not here, then where? And somebody had mentioned it earlier. Yeah, it's all fine and well, but not in my neighborhood. And we can't say that. You know, if everybody in Lexington says, not in my neighborhood, we're going to be in Georgetown. And Georgetown's going to say, not in my neighborhood either. So it's a big problem, and I appreciate all your time and all your efforts, and thank you for your time. Thank you. We're going to take about a three-minute to five-minute break. I want to see the building and I want to talk to the staff up here please and Legal would you come over here with us please I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not sure what you're doing. I'm sorry. Thank you. Outro Music The End If you're coming in, please come in and have a seat. If you're coming in, please come in and have a seat. Can we get that door closed back there, please, if you don't mind? Now, we have listened to several people. We have listened to the legal representations from the church. or the end. And if we do not have any more comments, we're going to ask the staff for their rebuttal. And then after that, this board will make its decision. I think in terms of understanding some of the current occupants' judgments that they were led on to believe that they could do this, there's a lot of confusion here relating to what code issues are versus zoning issues. In a perfect world, it would all be coordinated really well, but that's just not the reality of how it works. It's not that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. It's just that they're kind of separate issues. Code issues basically are there to make sure the building is safe for habitation. Now, technically, in some cases, the exact type of habitation determines what they've got to do. In other cases, there might be a benefit, regardless of the type of habitation, to making a certain improvement. So when fire goes out there and says you can occupy this building for so many people, or when somebody that understands the building code goes out there and says, well, you really need to improve this stairway, make it functional, or you really need to go to the second floor of this building and improve the windows so people can get in and out of there if there's an emergency. Those are totally separate things from the zoning question. Now, when building inspection gets put on the spot, like they were in March, do we issue a CO to allow them to make an improvement to the second floor of this building, knowing that they can't occupy it as an overnight shelter, well, it puts them in a really tough spot, because that's an improvement that will benefit that building, regardless of how the second floor is occupied. And my gosh, if they say, no, we're not going to permit those window improvements, because we really know that you're going to occupy it as a homeless shelter, what if there's a fire and somebody's up there using it as a classroom, and the people can't get out? so they did the best thing that they could do in that situation. They issued the CO and said, yes, you can go ahead and make those improvements to the windows, but you can't occupy that second floor for anything other than classes and office space. And Ms. Ramsey, you showed that CO as evidence when you got it in the mail that it was all okay to go ahead and occupy that for overnight shelter. or you just didn't read one of the lines of the conditions that clearly said occupancy only for classes and office space. So you've got to understand clearly this difference between the code issues and the zoning issues. And I think it's important, I've got a couple more points, but we'll need to get Nancy Maranero from Building Inspection up here to give some more details about that, and she has some history that's really relevant about maybe the time frames of when they really did know that there was a zoning issue with regard to the overnight shelter. The only other thing really that I'll point in in regards to the different options that are floating around out there, Mr. Dove indicated a willingness maybe to go back to the board and amend the conditional use. Certainly if they want to try to do that, that's their choice. I just want to emphasize to you again that you can proceed with option five. It doesn't preclude them from going back to you all. It will be a new conditional use application. Start fresh. Lay it all out as accurately and as clearly as possible. Perhaps pose it in the framework of, yeah, we're going to do this in the shelter. Maybe it's some sort of accessory use. You know, that's going to be a really tough challenge for them to share that, but it's their option. They could do that within that six-month window. The application for conditional use is, at least compared to a zone change, much quicker. It's generally about a month and a half process, depending on when you hit the timing. So that's certainly an option that they could take within that six-month window. I think that's pretty much all I've got to say, and I think Ms. Maranero might be able to come up and speak for building inspection. yes ma'am first of all does anybody have any specific questions for me Nancy Maranero, I'm with the Division of Building Inspection. Nancy, I think the main thing that maybe would be helpful is, in your involvement with this, at what point do you think that it was clear, clearly communicated to the Catholic Action Center or Emanuel Apostolic Church that there was a zoning issue with regard to the overnight shelter? As far as the overnight shelter, our office was made aware that they were opening a homeless shelter, I think, by watching the news. After that, we did meet with Pastor Jesse Morgan and Jenny Ramsey, along with our director. They had asked at that time if they could use the second floor to house homeless veterans, or they wanted to expand to the second floor. We told them at that time, no, that would not be possible. You're authorized as a church. We understand that you do some ministry to help feed and house the homeless, as do many churches. That seemed normal to us. We kept getting calls from different organizations, also from the Fire Prevention Bureau, that they were requesting that they be able to occupy the second floor as a homeless shelter, and we kept saying no. This is throughout every certificate of occupancy we have issued. It has all been for a church. A homeless shelter is not an assembly use. It's a residential use. None of the COs are for residential use. We have made that, I think, clear time and time again. The last time that we spoke with Jenny was back in February. She had said that they wanted to replace some windows. We said that was fine. They wanted to, at that time, make them egress windows, and we told them that it was not a problem whether or not that they met egress at that time. It's just a matter of what they were going to use the entire building for. Every church usually has some type of accessory use, but we looked at it as where you're going to take the entire building and use it for one use. then it should be specified what that use is. And at that point, we told her if there was any changes going to be made to the use of the second floor, that she would have to have another building permit application, and we would look at it as what they were proposing, which was they were asking if they could house people on the second floor. Any questions? Any comments? Thank you. Okay. Any comments from the staff? Then it's time for the, we have no other comments, no other questions, and I'm going to ask this board for a motion. Mr. Chairman, I move that we revoke the conditional use of the Inner City Breakthrough Ministries C-2010-20 for the failure to comply with the conditions imposed from the applicant was approved as a church in March 2010 on the Wholesale and Warehouse Business B-4 zone on property located at 824 Winchester Road for the reasons listed by Mr. Marks in his supplemental staff report on page four of those four reasons. And let me say this about the motion as well. We as a Board of Adjustment cannot ignore the regulations and requirements of the zoning laws and we're not deciding, for example, whether or not this church should exist but where. The zoning laws of the Commonwealth and the requirements on us as a board allow us and require us to make decisions, the tough decisions just like this. We've heard a lot of testimony today, but it's also the responsibility of entities like this to live in the world, and particularly to live in this community. This organization has a responsibility to obey the law, to obey the zoning laws, and you can't just say, I'm going to leave it up to God. You have to live in the world. So while you as an organization cannot ignore the laws of the community, we can't ignore the laws either. So that's probably the basis of my motion, Mr. Chairman. Do I have a second? I'll second, but I'd like to clarify the portion of this motion that allows them to have a certain amount of time to solve the problem. Yes. Mr. Chairman, to the extent that that needs explanation, my motion is based on option number five of the supplemental report, which includes that recommendation for allowing a six-month period for relocation. I'll second that motion. And before I call for the vote, I want to make a comment. I've been around this board for going on 17, 18 years. Long time. This case was very touching. But by the same token, we as volunteers are asked to serve this community in a fashion relative to what the regulations say and how they are stipulated. Some things that we, in some cases that we feel very close to from the standpoint of sentiments, we have to make a decision. Sometimes that decision doesn't set well, even with us. But we have to do it because if we set a precedence and go against it, then we find ourselves as a body being useless and unuseful. And while I have sympathy for what has happened here, I hope the message to this city and to our leaders in this city that this issue has to be addressed somehow. And it has to be addressed before the snow falls, where people are going to be displaced and have no place to go. It is not our responsibility as a board to do any mandating in this particular area, but it is our responsibility to make people aware that where we are is not very comfortable right now. It's not very comfortable being here. We are making a decision based upon the fact that when this case was issued, it was not issued entirely up front. It wasn't issued entirely up front. And I hear about the church, and I hear about Jesus, and I hear about Christianity, and I believe in all of that, but I also heard that Jesus had to pay taxes and had to abide by the rules and regulations. And we as humans have to do that. We as people have to do that. Displaced or placed, we have to do that. And while I have some sorrow here in what we are doing, I hope this sends a message to this city that things have to change for those folk who have no place to go. Do I have a motion and a second? Do all in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you for your time. Please. Please. If you say to us, somebody went to the staff, you might check. See if they can. How to wear. Thank you.