CITY OKs HALFWAY HOUSE LOCATIONS

The Cape Girardeau City Council approved an ordinance outlining where halfway houses can operate within the city Monday night.

Under the ordinance, halfway house programs will be allowed to operate with special use permits in most of the city's commercial, manufacturing and industrial zones.

Council members agreed to remove a two-year time limit on special permits required for the programs after an attorney for the Gibson Center, a residential treatment facility for adults, said the limit would prevent the center from carrying out its contract with the state to provide treatment services for prisoners preparing for release.

The Gibson Center, 1112 Linden, has contracted with the Missouri Department of Probation and Parole to provide a halfway house treatment program for prisoners within 90 days of their release date.

The two-year time limit would have quashed the contract, said attorney Jeff Hine, which required a three-year commitment.

The ordinance approved Monday night was a revision of an ordinance introduced in September which would have allowed halfway house programs only in C-2 commercial districts.

The original ordinance also stipulated the programs could not be located within 500 feet of any church, school, day care center, group home, motel or residential area, and would have restricted the special use permits to one year.

Most sections of the city would have been off-limits to halfway house programs under the original ordinance.

Councilman Tom Neumeyer, Ward 2, who introduced the new version of the halfway house ordinance, also called for removing the time limit after Hine's comments.

Neumeyer has said he is not opposed to having halfway house programs in the city, but said he is concerned that steps be taken to ensure the safety of residents in surrounding areas.

Some residents in the neighborhood of the Gibson Center have expressed concern about the halfway house proposal.

A man who lives about four blocks from the Gibson Center voiced his opposition to the proposed halfway house at Monday night's meeting.

"I'm against it for a number of reasons. Mainly we have a lot of elderly people who live around the Gibson Center," said the man, who did not give his name. "The Gibson Center does not watch what they have already. You'd have a madhouse down there. You'd have people breaking into people's houses all the time. I do not want it nowhere near my home at all."

The center is adjacent to housing for the elderly and the handicapped and is near the state school for the handicapped and the Head Start center.

The Gibson Center is located in an R-4 residential zone. City planning officials say the facility will need to be rezoned and be granted a special use permit before a halfway house program can be established.

Hine said a special use permit already has been applied for. The city's Planning and Zoning Commission will review the application and recommend whether it should be granted.

In other action, council members set Nov. 3 as the date for a public hearing on the city's new franchise with TCI Cablevision of Missouri Inc.

The new agreement would require an overall upgrade of the cable system and an additional channel for educational programming.

The city's Cable Advisory Committee has recommended approval of the agreement.