The homeless-shelter verdict was a blow. Now, Boise’s City Council wants its power back
An Idaho Supreme Court ruling against the construction of a new location for Boise’s Interfaith Sanctuary came as a blow, said Executive Director Jodi Peterson-Stigers.
Interfaith “obviously is disappointed,” she told the Idaho Statesman Jan. 22. It wasn’t clear what the ruling would mean in practice, since the project has been under construction for months, and the shelter’s existing facility is bursting at the seams.
“Interfaith is our only low-barrier shelter in the city,” Boise City Council Member Colin Nash said at a Tuesday town hall for constituents. “If we do not have a low-barrier shelter in this city, we are going to have serious problems.”
Amid the fallout of the ruling, some members of Boise’s City Council realized it may have a problem of its own.
The court took issue with the council’s decision to overturn, on appeal, an earlier denial by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission of the shelter’s application for a conditional use permit. The city’s code, the court said, doesn’t allow the City Council to overturn a P&Z decision unless it can prove that the commission made a mistake.
That was news to City Council and to P&Z commissioners, Council Member Colin Nash said at a Tuesday town hall for constituents.
“It’s a very rare circumstance that you would find” a clear enough error to meet that standard, he said. And given the court’s interpretation of the city’s code, he said, “I doubt that’s something that’s going to stay.”
“What the court said is, ‘You’ve got to show your work when you do overturn P and Z. And by the way, P and Z has a lot more power than what you think they have,’” said Council Member Luci Willits, who co-hosted the town hall. “So there is going to have to be an ordinance change.”
Maria Weeg, a spokesperson for the city, told the Idaho Statesman Jan. 23 that it was “too soon to say” what implications the court’s decision would have on previous City Council decisions that overturned P&Z decisions.
Proposal of code change raises question: expertise vs. accountability?
The city’s P&Z Commission exists because of the “sheer number” of land-use applications the city receives, Nash said at the meeting.
“We cannot process all those applications without this turning into a full-time job,” he said. “We just simply can’t do it.”
But unlike City Council members, P&Z Commissioners aren’t elected — they’re appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council, which means they’re not accountable to residents, he said.
“I think if you want the shelter and you think I should be voting for that, you can make your voice known with your vote. If you don’t like the shelter and you don’t like where it’s at, you should be able to hold me accountable for that,” he said. “The disconnect we have here is that right now that falls to P and Z, and my hands are tied.”
“I think you folks deserve the level of accountability that would come with council making those types of decisions.” he added.
If the council passed an ordinance that updated the city’s code, the council would treat P&Z decisions, when appealed, effectively as recommendations, he said.
In that case, “we are not bound to the decision that P&Z had made, though the work that they did informs the decision that we made,” Nash said.
One attendee at Tuesday’s town hall raised concerns about the council overturning decisions made by the “experts” on the P&Z commission.
“Rumor has it that, oh, if you get turned down at Planning and Zoning, just go to the council and they’ll approve it,” she said. “That’s really disturbing to me.”
But Willits and Nash pushed back on that concern, noting that the council only overturned P&Z decisions six times last year. And they said it’s in the city’s best interest for decisions to receive consideration at multiple levels.
“I like that we see these at City Council. I think that’s really a healthy thing,” Willits said. “The one thing that we don’t like in the U.S. is absolute power. You have delineated powers of government … At the end of the day, I’m accountable to voters.”
