Sober house still an open question

The saga of the Freedom House continues with no City Council resolution.

Freedom House, a nonprofit clean and sober house for men that has been in operation at 1128 Third Ave. W. since early May, requested a conditional-use permit from the city earlier this year based on advice from the city planner.

The Kalispell City Council, which has postponed the issue twice already, held a work-study session on the issue Monday night.

The council is struggling with whether or not to approve the permit and whether it can put conditions on the permit that carry any weight.

In the meantime, the president of the house, Randall Marr, is in jail after being charged with violating his probation from felony theft and bail jumping convictions in 2000.

Marr, who was arrested Sept. 24 at the Kalispell hospital, was not at Monday’s meeting. He was still in the Flathead County jail with a $10,000 bond.

Based on advice from City Attorney Charlie Harball, several council members questioned whether the council could impose any conditions on the house.

City Planner Tom Jentz recommended the house be considered a community residential facility for zoning purposes. The state of Montana doesn’t regulate or license these facilities, however. The federal government protects them under the federal Fair Housing Act.

Mayor Tammi Fisher noted that when Freedom House asked for a conditional use permit, the zoning ordinance that existed at the time defined a family as no more than four unrelated people living together. The zoning ordinance since has changed, which means the Freedom House, which plans to house up to eight men but recently housed only five, isn’t violating that density standard.

“They can exist and we can do nothing about it,” Fisher said. “I would love to regulate it, I just don’t know that we can.”

She questioned whether requiring the house to have an on-site manager around the clock could be enforced. Harball said the city has a legal foundation in doing so since the zoning ordinance contains language about a community residential facility.

“You can’t kick it down the road forever,” Harball added.

The city previously had approved a conditional-use permit for a similar women’s home on Hawthorn Street. That home doesn’t have an on-site manager, council member Kari Gabriel said. City Planner Tom Jentz noted the owners use cameras to verify when people come and go.

Council member Duane Larson asked if the city could limit the number of residents and require two off-site parking spaces for each Freedom House resident.

Harball said that would be discrimination unless the city extends those requirements to the neighborhood.

Neighbor Jeremy Olmstead noted his family has been struggling with cigarette smoke wafting in their windows. Olmstead’s residence is located only 20 feet behind the Freedom House.

Olmstead said he has a baby and his wife “has been in tears because of the feeling she’s trapped in her home.

“I want them to succeed,” Olmstead said of the Freedom House, but questioned whether its location is right.

Tara Norick said she is the property manager of the home and said her sister owns it. “We don’t need a conditional-use permit,” she said, noting she advised the Freedom House leadership to withdraw its application.

Stasia Reid said she lived in the home for 18 months prior to Freedom House’s occupation of it. She said there were hobo spiders in the basement, bats in the chimney with six inches of bat dung and black mold inside a wall in Olmstead’s apartment. In addition, “parking was a huge, huge problem for us,” she said. Norick later said she had the basement sprayed three times and that the spiders no longer are present.

In addition, the moldy wall in Olmstead’s apartment was removed prior to his occupancy, and the home where Freedom House is located was completely remodeled before they moved in, Norick said.

William Hawk, who serves as Freedom House’s volunteer house manager, said the opponents’ main concern is their property value.

Hawk said Marr’s present situation is “unfortunate,” and described Marr’s previous statement about the men having to be out of the house between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. each weekday as “overzealous.” Hawk said the men “are to be on job search” during those hours if they don’t have a job. But “some guys work late-night shifts” and one man has a 100-percent disability. Three men were asked to leave because they failed urine tests, Hawk said.

Freedom House will be considered again during Monday’s regular council session, Jentz said.

In other news, the council postponed discussion about a revised animal ordinance due to Monday’s meeting running late. Jentz said the council likely will consider it in late October.

Council member Bob Hafferman asked about a recent kickoff meeting of the new airport study, specifically a Stelling Engineer representative’s statement about not differentiating between training and other flights at the city’s general aviation airport.

Hafferman questioned the point of the study, noting that a Montana Department of Transportation pamphlet states there are 43,000 flights annually there. The number of flights is higher than at Glacier Park International Airport, he said.

“We aren’t differentiating in the noise portion of the study,” City Manager Jane Howington said.

In contrast to Stelling representative Jeff Walla’s remarks about not using microphones as part of the noise study and instead using “modeling forecasts,” Howington said the city has noise meters on the airport’s runway. “We have discussed taking meters into different parts of the neighborhood,” she said, noting that is not part of Stelling’s responsibility in the study, which should take between 1 1/2 and two years.