LOGAN – Logan officials and residents of the Cliffside neighborhood will face off in an administration hearing of the Logan City Land Use Appeal Board on Monday, Sept. 15.
At issue is the residents’ efforts to appeal a controversial conditional use permit (CUP) for a residential treatment facility in the fashionable Cliffside area, according to J. Brett Chambers, a local attorney with Harris, Preston & Chambers, LLC.
In addition to the appeal before the Land Use Board, Chambers’ clients have also filed an ex parte request for a temporary restraining order filed with First District Court on Aug. 6.
The neighbors’ objection isn’t so much with the facility itself, Chambers explains. Rather, they object to the way that their voices were unilaterally excluded from the decision-making process by Michael DeSimone, the city’s community development director.
According to court documents, DeSimone authored an Aug. 4 city memo in which he justified waiving Logan’s maximum occupancy limit of three unrelated individuals in a residential dwelling and its requirements for a public hearing prior to issuing a conditional use permit.
Citing the U.S. Fair Housing Act, the Utah Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, DeSimone wrote that those laws make it “… discriminatory to take public comment and involve the public in a decision that is generally technical and inherently administrative, especially where public clamor may be motivated by ill-conceived stereotypes of the disabled or based on ignorance or prejudices.”
The property in question is located at 1257 Eastridge Drive, an existing three-level home with seven bedrooms and 3.5 baths occupying approximately 4,000 square feet.
The Finding Hope, LLC proposes to house up to 12 individuals suffering from a disability associated with debilitating substance use disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression there.
The facility’s residents would be supervised by up to three staff members during normal business hours and one or two staff members outside of normal business hours.
Other than acknowledging that Logan has issued the conditional use permit and a business license for the treatment facility, DeSimone has declined comment on the situation, on the advice of the city attorney, citing the pending litigation in First District Court.
But Chambers argues that city officials essentially admitted in DeSimone’s memo of Aug. 4 that they eliminated the public process to silence the community and avoid a potential lawsuit from the commercial facility.
The Logan City Land Use Appeal Board will meet at 3 p.m. on Sept. 15 at Logan City Hall, located at 290 North, 100 West in Logan.