Agenda - Planning Commission - 10/03/1995

Home

Z.B. September 15, 1995 Page 5 group home residents as a family when determining what uses were allowed in a single-f, mily residential district. It did not restrict the number of people who could live in a group home. Ordinance -- Property Owners Protest Facility for Pre-Parole Prisoners Abbott v. Board of County Commissioners of Weld County, Colorado, 895 P.;2d 1165 (Colorado) 1995 In 1989, the Weld County (Colo.) Board of County Commissioners approved a request tO rezone the Fort Junction Planned Unit Development (Fort Junction) from agricultural to a combination of commercial and industrial zones. Under the zoning ordinance, an allowed use category in one of the commercial zones included '!HOSPITALS, nursing homes, and mental or physical rehabilitation centers." The ordinance stated that words or phrases not specifically defined would be igiven their ordinary, contemporary meanings, and that listings of allowed uses were "representative and [were] not all inclusive.'" The Villa at Greeley Inc. filed an application for a planned unit develop- ment plan. to operate a pre-parole facility in Fort Junction. The Villa would operate the facility under a contract with the state Department of Corrections. The enabl!ng statute stated that pre-parole facilities provided in-residence pro- grams and services to provide treatment and teach prerelease inmates about employmemt, academic Courses, vocational training, and community resources. In 1993, the board appro3,ed The Villa's application after a public hearing. The board.found the proposed building was "representative of" uses like hospi- tals, nursirtg homes, and mental or physical rehabilitation centers. Therefore, it was consistent with the allowed uses. A group of property owners (inclUding Abbott) asked a court to review the board's decision. They wanted the court to declare the approval void and to stop the board from letting construction begin. According to the property own- ers, the facility was a prison, so it was not identical to any uses allowed in Fort Junction. The board said the facility would be like a mental or physical reha- bilitation ¢.enter. The court dismissed the case, finding the board did not abuse its disCretion when it interpreted the zoning law to allow a pre-parole center in Fort Junction. The property owners appealed. DECISION:-Affirmed. The lower court properly dismissed the property owners' case. The board had enough evidence to support its conclusion that the facility was like a rehabilitation center. Since the phrase "rehabilitation center" was not defined and the listed uses were not all inclusive, the board had discretion about what type of use the facility was. The Villa's chief operating officer, the architect, the corrections director, and a practicing psychiatrist all testified that the facility was more like a rehabilitation center than a prison. Based on that testimony, the board reasonably could conclude the proposed facility would be similar to the ones listed in the zoning law, even though the list did not specifi- cally refer to a pre-parole center.