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KT&FP Senior Editor

Kingfisher city commissioners defeated two bids by a local church to establish sober living homes without casting a single vote either for or against rezoning requests Monday night.

Commissioner Wendell Prim made two separate motions to approve the Frontline Ministries’ requests to rezone two homes on West Erwin Avenue from R-1 to R-3, paving the way for consideration of conditional use permits which would have allowed their use as men’s and women’s sober living houses in a project the church called Journey Center.

Both Prim’s motions died for lack of a second, effectively denying both requests without any commissioner casting a vote on the record.

As the full-house audience quickly emptied after commissioners declined to act, opponents of the project thanked commissioners for the outcome.

A number of supporters of the project also were present for the more-than-hour-long discussion, in addition to Frontline Senior Pastor Debbie Burpo and Associate Pastor Ron Porter, who spearheads the church’s outreach program that has served Central Oklahoma’s homeless and addicted populations for more than 10 years.

Muddied Waters

At times during the lengthy discussion, even commissioners seemed confused about the extent of their authority or the impact of their actions.

Part of the problem is that a sober living home was not contemplated in the city’s zoning matrix and is not specifically listed as either an allowed or conditional use in any of the enumerated zones.

So when Frontline representatives approached the city for appropriate authorization to operate their homes more than five months ago, they were directed by community development director Jon Friesen to apply for rezoning from R-1 “Single Family Residential” to R-3 “Multi-Family Residential,” which includes “hospital restricted to mental, narcotics or alcoholic patients” as one of its conditional uses, provided the city grants a permit.

From the outset, Frontline has argued that a sober living house is not a hospital or medical facility and city officials have responded that the R-3 conditional use provision is the “closest fit” contained in the city’s zoning ordinances.

“Initially, the goal was let’s get it into one of our current zoning classifications,” City Attorney Jared Harrison said Monday night. “The only place they had a classification where this fits is R-3 with a conditional use permit.

“I don’t think the requirement is it has to be R-3 but we don’t have a zoning classification to fit it in R-1.”

Federal Complications

Further muddying the waters are provisions in the federal Americans With Disabilities and Fair Housing Acts which appear to limit how and how much a city can regulate sober living homes. The former act identifies addicts (although not active drug users) as a protected class and the latter holds that housing regulations can’t unreasonably restrict where addicts may reside within a community.

“I did some checking too. As the city, we can’t stop this from happening. ADA and FHA said sober living is exempt from a lot of the code,” Prim said at one point. “According to the laws, ladies and gentlemen, the city can’t stop this.”

When Prim said the church doesn’t even have to apply for a zoning change because of federal protections, both City Manager Dave Slezickey and City Clerk Brittney Hladik responded: “Yes, they still do.”

“There are certain things when you start talking ADA – reasonable accommodations – and there are certain places where they are going to trump our code,” Harrison said.

Neighborhood Controversy

Some residents in the neighborhood of the proposed Journey Center have expressed persistent concerns about their safety if the sober living houses were allowed to operate in that area.

Area homeowner Robert Wehrenberg, who also spoke at the planning and zoning hearing and the commission’s first consideration of the rezoning request last month in addition to writing numerous letters, spoke again Monday night and distributed a petition he had circulated with signatures of other residents who were opposed to the center.

City resident Ellen Wilfong, who said she had served as a youth minister for 25 years and has an ongoing personal ministry for the homeless, said her 82-year-old father was attacked and robbed at gunpoint by an addict he was allowing to live in his rent house.

“I have a lot of addiction in my family and I’m glad people give them second chances but you don’t treat them in residential areas,” she said. “My problem is the location.”

Mark Squires, who said he lives right beside the proposed homes, also objected to the location.

“I am a recovering alcoholic. I know the people they are talking about,” he said. “I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t mind living beside them, but I wouldn’t want my 16-year-old daughter living beside them. Keep in mind what’s important – where it’s located and who it affects.”

However, Mark Perry, who said he lives within a block of the properties and who also described himself as a recovering alcoholic, called concerns expressed by other neighbors as “over the top and fear-mongering.”

Perry said he talked to Bur-po about the Journey Center and how it would operate and concluded:

“You have nothing to fear from the people who are in there. They are trying to better their lives. Give them a chance. They are not monsters.”

Prim and Roxanne Alexander were the only two commissioners to speak out during the discussion.

Alexander said she spoke to the state fire marshal and read off a list of safety provisions she said the homes would have to provide to comply with state fire codes.

Porter responded that he didn’t believe that all the requirements Alexander cited applied to the sober living homes.

Harrison said state fire marshal requirements were beyond the purview of the city’s authority.

“There are going to be some state fire rules that they are going to have to comply with but they could turn around under ADA reasonable accommodations and be exempt from some of them,” he said. “That will still fall under the state fire marshal’s authority and won’t be our decision.”

Genesis of the Proposal

For the last four years, the church has made plans and earmarked funds donated from within its own congregation to establish a yearlong sober living program to provide a highly-structured, faith-based transition from addiction to a functional and productive lifestyle.

Burpo said the long-term program, modeled after Adult and Teen Challenge, a program in which Porter had worked for many years, appeared to be a logical extension of the church’s existing 12-step outpatient sobriety program.

The church’s plans involved utilizing residences it had acquired adjacent to and across the street from its church on Erwin Avenue, so that residents in the Journey Center homes could utilize the classrooms and sanctuary for the religious and educational components of the program, as well as the fellowship hall for communal meals.

Porter referred to the opportunity to minimize development costs by utilizing existing facilities as “using what Jesus has already given us.”

The plan also was expected to keep the program affordable – a $1,200 fee is all that residents would be charged for the entire 12 months, compared to as much as $30,000 a month charged at other private residential drug treatment facilities, Burpo said.

The church had one more hurdle – the city’s approval to rezone the properties and grant a conditional use permit – which Burpo said she didn’t even expect to be a hurdle at all until the week before the January planning and zoning board meeting when a wave of neighborhood concerns erupted on social media.

“From the outside, these homes weren’t going to look any different than they do now and we were focused on all the positive outcomes we were expecting – mainly restoring these struggling people back to their families as contributing members of society,” Burpo has said said. “We honestly didn’t expect this kind of neighborhood protest.”

The church organized a last-minute public meeting the week of the P&Z hearing to answer any questions or concerns people might have had about their plans and the safety precautions they would have in place.

Several members of the seven-member P&Z board attended the church’s informational meeting and three of them, including Carolyn Flood, Jean Crosswhite and Judy Whipple, voted to recommend both the rezoning request and the conditional use permit at the January hearing.

A fourth member, Reggie Redwine, voted to recommend the zoning change but against the conditional use permit.

That landed the ultimate decision in the lap of the city commission which voted in February to table the agenda item and then allowed the zoning request to die when none of the remaining commissioners – Tammy Mueggenborg, Roxanne Alexander or Bill Tucker – offered a second to Prim’s motion to approve the zoning change.

(As mayor, Steve Richards can vote on motions but can’t offer or second them.)

What’s Next?

When asked by a commissioner what recourse the church had since its request was not approved, Harrison said any city commission decision is appealable to district court.

Burpo, who did not speak at the meeting other than in response to citizen questions and concerns, later told the

Times and Free Press:

“I must confess, tonight’s meeting was a disappointment and confusing in many ways. After three meetings of discussing pros and cons regarding sober living environments, it came down to, ‘we really don’t have anything that fits your request, so let’s just get this done, allow the motion to die for want of a second and not vote.’

“I think that is the most disheartening part. It appeared all those weeks of waiting and then meetings didn’t seem to matter.

“Was it an easy way out of a difficult decision? Probably so.”

However, Burpo said the church was not ready to abandon its plans.

“Honestly, we don’t see this as a defeat, only a slight detour in the process,” she said. “Throughout this process, we have received abundantly more support than opposition. This community knows and backs the need for sober living homes and I know they will help us move forward.

“I believe if God brought us this far in the process, he will certainly help us complete the task and provide the homes needed, and debt-free, as we originally planned. He has never failed us yet and that brings me great hope in this situation.”