Warming Center Agreement Public Comment from Karlene Osorio-Khor Aimee Brunckhorst
From: K Khor <kkhor838@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2025 2:57 AM
To: Kalispell Meetings Public Comment
Subject: EXTERNAL Warming Center Agreement
Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Flagged
Dear Mayor, City Council Members:
If the City doesn't enforce the conditions within the CUP; what's the point of having CUPS?
I sat on the Kalispell Planning Board. I recall a time when I called other planning boards from
the East Coast to the West Coast to get information on their processes as we were hoping to
review and consider for revamping the bylaws of the planning board committee.
One consistent I learned was cities took entities who were no longer in compliance with their
CUPS to District Court.
This surprised me, at the time, because our city had taken an unofficial position of facilitating
neighbors and entities to talk with each other to solve the problems to keep the CUP in
compliance. This worked until the Warming Center.
I know the Warming Center struck the city first by cleverly lawyering up and suing the city but
no matter how much is said by both sides; it appears the first judicial round wasn't an
overwhelming hands down win for the Warming Center.
It was driven more by a judge sympathetic to the time of year (winter) upon the homeless and
not necessarily the rights of a city and neighborhood to plan what lies within it by way of a
CUP.
I would argue the cost to the City to not continue to defend against the law suit by the
Warming Center will be infinitely more than the current legal fees.
The message to all your constituents will be the city does not stand behind its own rules and
regulations.
The message will be the city does not stand with its voters who pay taxes and try to get along
with a neighbor who does not follow the rules.
Clearly, the Warming Center did not follow its CUP and the neighbors complained to their
council representatives who took action.
The initial efforts of the City was to bring the parties together with experienced facilitators but
the Warming Center shut those efforts down refusing to attend a second meeting with its
neighbors.
The City Council was faced with a torturous decision but it had to uphold the CUP and the
Warming Center had not only not complied with its CUP but refused a second meeting with its
neighbors. The council had no choice but to act.
If the council does not go forward and defend against the Warming Center: The neighborhood
will see a fall in property value. No one will be eager to purchase a home near the Warming
Center or the surrounding neighborhood.
The crime, the littering, the loitering creates real costs to businesses to maintain their premises
from the impacts Warming Center people place upon their business property, the sidewalks
and streets; the Warming Center impacts these businesses customers and loss of revenue to
the business is a result.
Businesses will vacate those commercial properties and the properties will be difficult to re-
rent.
I hope you will not fold your cards and walk away. I urge the city to continue to defend its right
to enforce and hold CUPS vigorously in compliance.
Many cities have taken entities like the Warming Center who fall out of the conditions of their
CUPS to District Court; I urge the city to reach out to them.
It may be Kalispell's first time in the position of being sued by a non compliant CUP holder but
it hasn't been for other cities who in the end have prevailed.
The other more sobering thought is citizens in the affected neighborhood could turn around
and sue the city for not holding all CUPS to compliance (just some of them to compliance) and
not the one in their neighborhood.
Karlene Osorio-Khor
Kalispell
2
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