After postponing the issue at its last regular meeting to allow more time to speak with all affected parties, the Centralia City Council approved the ordinance amending the special uses code with a 7-0 vote at their meeting on Tuesday evening.
The reworking of the code was prompted after a company expressed an interest in locating a residential psychiatric care facility in a residential neighborhood near Centralia Christian School in April of 2019.
After the Feb. 11 meeting, when the ordinance was postponed, Councilor Peter Abbarno and Councilor Rebecca Staebler set up a meeting with concerned organizations and answered questions individuals had about the code. The revised code was presented to councilors with highlighted, underlined, and crossed out sections to dictate where the changes had been made since the last time they saw the code.
“I just wanted to say that a lot of times when we get a big, big change like that, even though we want to get it done, it’s important to take a step back and make sure that if there are any concerns within the community that we address those,” Abbarno said on Tuesday night.
Abbarno mentioned several organizations that he talked with about the zoning changes that would be made within the special use code including the Housing Resource Center, Friends Without Homes, Centralia Christian School and Hub City Mission and said that after speaking with them he was confident in passing the ordinance.
The new code has been described by Emil Pierson, director of community development for Centralia, as much more streamlined making it easier to understand and read.
“At that time (April 2019) you had a lot of concerns with essential public facilities and basically staff took it to the planning commission and as we opened up this item it kind of just had a rippling effect at that point,” Pierson said when addressing the council at the Feb. 11 council meeting.
The code was rewritten by Pierson and the Planning Commission including Jakob McGhie, planning commission chairman and Norm Chapman, vice-chairman. Pierson said that when they started taking a closer look at the code they decided to look at all of the uses in all zones of the code.
“When we went to the special uses code, we just threw the whole thing out and started all over. Through that we came up with a new code called ‘conditional uses,’ ” said Pierson.
Pierson explained the steps of the conditional use process.
“They would have the application, they’d go through staff review, then to the hearing examiner and the hearing examiner would hold a public hearing then he would examine the conditions for approval or denial for that conditional use. It’s much more open and it’s not left to staff decision but it’s a neutral party,” Pierson said.
Since the prior reading of the code changes that were made include the addition of additional definitions to the proposed code to clarify specific uses and added that hospitals are permitted in the medical district, according to the council agenda report.
The city has held eight public workshops about the code and a public hearing, Pierson said.
