West Lafayette mask fines off the books; Faith Church rehab rezone faces not-in-my-backyard
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West Lafayette mask fines off the books; Faith Church rehab rezone faces not-in-my-backyard
A first Monday of the month roundup: West Lafayette ditches mask fines, Faith Church faces neighbors not digging rehab in backyard, cities go own way on opioid lawsuits
Ah, the first Monday of the month. A day when just about every governmental body holds a public meeting. Here are scenes from three.
So long, West Side mask mandate fines, we hardly knew ya
Monday night, West Lafayette City Hall, a debut …
Since the January unveiling of a $15.9 million remodel at West Lafayette City Hall – the former Morton Community Center, former Morton School, now dubbed the Sonya Margerum City Hall … whew – the one constant has been an empty meeting space.
Thanks, COVID.
Until Monday’s city council session, when council members found their way to the stark white surrounds, topped with the black “M” above what once was the school’s stage, of a renovated meeting space.
Council members seemed to agree: It was good to see everyone’s faces, again, after more than a year of meeting via phone and video conferencing.
It seemed right, too, that among the business was closing the loop on what proved to be a controversial bit of West Lafayette history: So long to the city’s mandatory mask policy.
Not that it ever was used to issue a fine. And not that it wasn’t already lifted, for all practical purposes, in May when the Centers for Disease Control loosened guidance regarding masks for those who were vaccinated.
But Monday night, the council voted 9-0 to take the ordinance off the books, 11 months after the city initially imposed the sanctions. (Lafayette and Tippecanoe County didn’t follow suit, sticking with CDC guidance, the governor’s executive orders recommending masks and frequent pleas from the county health officer.)
Mayor John Dennis ordered the mask mandate – carrying a $100 fine for first violations – in July 2020. The policy followed Purdue’s demands that students wear masks on and off campus in social settings. A rural West Lafayette resident sued, arguing Dennis didn’t have that sort of unilateral power. In a September ruling, a Tippecanoe County judge agreed. The judge allowed that the city council did have that power. A week later, the council made it so.
Monday night, Dennis contended that the mandate and its early reminder for caution helped keep caseloads down in the university town.
“It’s probably time to pull the mask mandate,” Dennis said. (The council had built periodic reviews of the mandate into the ordinance so it wouldn’t remain on the books long after the pandemic faded.)
It came with a caveat Dennis insisted needed to be said, after being approached earlier in the day with a question: “That doesn’t mean that if you choose to wear a mask you will be, in any way, penalized.”
Council member David Sanders, the lone councilor wearing a mask during the meeting, joined in a unanimous vote to lift the mandate. But he railed at what he called conspiracy theories that kept people from getting the COVID-19 vaccine and complacency around safety precautions that could leave parts of the community and the country exposed to outbreaks.
“We may be able to congratulate ourselves as a community, perhaps,” Sanders said. “It’s not time to congratulate ourselves as a nation. … This is not a time to relax.”
Neighbors balk, commissioners OK Faith Church’s addiction recovery rezoning
In the morning, with the Tippecanoe County commissioners …
Faith Church’s expansive community outreach projects in and around Greater Lafayette typically had their fair share of side-eye, for better or for worse, as they’ve been planted.
Bond permission for Faith West Community Center and its student apartments nearly a decade ago in West Lafayette. All the moving parts that bundled existing nonprofit agencies into the North End Community Center, replacing a ragged strip mall along Elmwood Avenue. The renovation of several corners for the Hartford Hub, a community center in Lafayette’s Lincoln Neighborhood.
Blowback and muttering in some measure – remember West Lafayette City Council having to move a hearing to the high school for the Faith West request – was part of the deal for a Lafayette church who has put its evangelical muscle into an aggressive approach to what it sees as community issues to solve.
A plan for an expanded addictions treatment program open since 2016 near Colburn, in the very northeast part of Tippecanoe County, was no exception Monday.
Faith’s rezoning request, moving a 10-acre plot along County Road 800 North from agricultural use to industrial, opened the church to lingering, not-in-my-backyard questions from neighbors who live on Kipp Farm Road and back up to a facility the church calls Restoration.
“How would you feel with a drug rehab right up against your backyard,” Brent McKenzie, president of the Kipp Farm Road homeowners association, said after county commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the rezoning. “Every 30 weeks, you’re getting a new set of 12 (men). You never know how safe it’s going to be like that. Now, they’re expanding.”
Faith Church has owned about 100 acres along County Road 800 North since 2005, when it was donated to the church under the condition it be used for some sort of spiritual use, according to testimony given to commissioners Monday. After years of using existing homes on the land for ministers and retired missionaries, Faith Church in 2016 started Restoration Men’s Ministry, an intensive, faith-based approach to addictions. The 30-week program requires those who come to leave their home and essentially detach from their phones, outside contact and the rest of the lives for counseling, rehab and job skills.
“It’s anything but a free ride or a vacation,” Joe Blake, chairman of Faith Church’s board, told commissioners.
When Faith developed plans to add an 11,000-square-foot pole barn for a sawmill, workshop, storage and offices, Restoration staff asked the Area Plan Commission whether the land was zoned for that. The answer: It wasn’t. And the rest of the program’s space would be more legitimate under an industrial zoning.
The rezoning notifications brought Kipp Farm Road neighbors out.
Greg Wetterlin, director of the Restoration program, said Faith set up meetings with neighbors and worked on the complaints, including knocking off the back-up beeping of skid loaders and promising to install a privacy fence along the Kipp Farm Road section of the property. (After the meeting, he mentioned that Faith had given neighbors access to a pond on the property – a spot for catch-and-release fishing and backdrop to high school senior photos – without complaint.)
“We’re trying to make this a place where men can learn a marketable skill and learn how to function, seeing what they can do by putting down alcohol or drugs,” Wetterlin said. “There aren’t enough resources out there doing this. We believe we’re doing work that needs to be done in the community.”
Beyond that, Faith’s attorney, Tyler Ochs, suggested the church had earned trust from the way other, highly visible community outreach projects had turned out. Faith brought two men who’d gone through the program to testify on its behalf.
Commissioners were on board.
McKenzie wasn’t so sure.
“We’ll see,” McKenzie said. “I’m not convinced it’s safe for us. Like I said, how would you like it?”
Lafayette, West Lafayette and the opioid settlement opt out
In the evening, on both sides of the river …
Rather than sticking around and taking what the state negotiates as a settlement with pharmaceutical companies blamed for feeding an opioid addiction crisis, Lafayette and West Lafayette city councils opted out, sticking with their own lawsuits against the companies.
The cities had until June 30 to opt out, according to a state law designed to consolidate county and municipality lawsuits into a single settlement. Lafayette and West Lafayette were among 76 Indiana cities and counties who filed suits, starting in late 2017.
Under that state’s structure, an Indiana settlement would put 70 percent throughout the state through the Family and Social Services Administration, 15 percent to the state and 15 percent split among units of local government, based on population.
“If we opt out, we’re not bound by the terms of the state settlement structure,” Jacque Chosnek, Lafayette city attorney, told the council.
In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in November 2017, Lafayette claimed “opioid addiction is ravaging Lafayette” and causing “overwhelming financial burden” on the city.
Lafayette’s suit named manufacturers: Purdue Pharma, Cephalon, Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Noramco, Inc., Endo Pharmaceuticals, Mallinckrodt PLC, Allergan PLC, and Watson Pharmaceuticals. The city also named distributors AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., and McKesson Corporation.
West Lafayette’s version was similar.
“I believe we are better off going ahead and staying with the opioid litigation track we’re on,” Eric Burns, West Lafayette city attorney, said.
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West Lafayette mask fines off the books; Faith Church rehab rezone faces not-in-my-backyard
“The lone councilor wearing a mask during the meeting”? Wouldn’t they all be wearing masks until the vote to end the mandate?