City delays permit for group home

After much neighborhood opposition, the Kalispell City Council on Monday tabled a request for a conditional use permit for an adult care home.

Doreen and Norm Hayek requested the permit to operate an assisted living center for up to four elderly people at 75 Buffalo Hill Drive.

All seven neighbors on the dead-end street close to the hospital opposed the permit, however, and the council decided to wait until the Hayeks obtain a license to operate from the Montana Department of Health and Human Services.

City Planning Director Tom Jentz noted that several state Supreme Court decisions require the city to approve the permit for a group home.

Council apparently didn’t like the situation, however, and decided to wait until the last possible moment before proceeding.

The vote to table the request was 6-2 with council members Bob Hafferman and Jim Atkinson dissenting. Randy Kenyon was absent.

Michael Ober spoke during public comment. “It’s a business in our neighborhood,” he said. “This will be the slow and inexorable decline of our neighborhood as we know it.”

Dale Haarr, a former council member who lives on Buffalo Hill Drive, also opposed the permit.

“I know that your hands are tied,” he said, but acknowledged that the city ultimately will have to approve the permit if the applicants get licensed.

“There’s not peace in the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s not the Montana way. It’s not the cowboy way. We’re talking thousands of dollars in depreciation of property.”

Haarr also alluded to carpetbaggers “who come in without anything invested and reap the benefit.”

Ober noted the owner of the home, Tom West, has moved back to California.

Norm Hayek said the couple has a two-year lease agreement on the property with an option to buy from West, who approved of the couple opening Valley View Senior Care.

Hayek said he has 35 years of experience as a general contractor developing land and building houses.

He said the couple already has “skin in the game” because they paid more than $400 for a conditional use permit. He said all they have to do to prepare the home is tile work in one bathroom and installing some fire extinguishers.

One of the two conditions recommended by the city Planning Board requires the business to commence within 18 months. The other requires the Hayeks to obtain a state license.

Noting that he dealt personally with the issue in the 1980s on the city Planning Board and in the 1990s on the City Council, Haarr encouraged the council to seek state legislation on the issue.

In other action, the council unanimously approved a conditional use permit that will allow the Samaritan House homeless shelter to operate a kitchen and serve meals at the former U.S. Army Reserve Center at 1110 Second St. W.

Samartian House director Chris Krager said this will free up space in the nearby shelter at 124 Ninth Ave. W.

Reporter Caleb Soptelean may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at csoptelean@dailyinterlake.com.