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A group of Sugar House residents recently handed out fliers, underscoring that Salt Lake City's decision to site four homeless shelters is "NOT a done deal."
The voices of concerned residents, it said, "are needed now."
The City Council decided against holding Tuesday night's expected vote on a resolution formalizing the shelter-site decision after member Erin Mendenhall broke ranks over the Sugar House site. The purchase of property is an administrative function and doesn't require the council's OK.
So what happened to the public input that was assured during the shelter-selection process?
"It became very quiet" in the runup to the city's December announcement, said former Mayor Ralph Becker, who started the two-year process in tandem with the programming efforts of Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams.
The city says it has vigorously courted public opinion, holding five mid-June workshops on selection criteria and busing media and residents to resource centers that would dispel visions of another Rio Grande emergency shelter.
But some residents who live near the proposed sites — 653 E. Simpson Ave. (2300 South), 275 W. High Ave. (1400 South), 131 E. 700 South and 648 W. 100 South — have said they weren't involved enough, given the possibly profound impact on their safety and property values.
Alexa McCallum last year bought a home about two blocks from 131 E. 700 South. She said she's trying to keep an open mind that a self-contained shelter will look nothing like the grim scene near The Road Home's downtown shelter and nearby Pioneer Park.
But the 28-year-old attorney says she didn't buy the explanation from Biskupski that the city kept the sites from the public to avoid pitting neighborhood against neighborhood. In her spare time last month, McCallum chronicled what she regards as guarantees of public engagement that were never honored.
• In June, Kathy Bounous, general counsel for the Department of Workforce Services, representing the State Homeless Coordinating Committee was quizzed by state Sen. Karen Mayne, D-West Valley City.
Asked Mayne: "You have public input, correct?"
Bounous said yes, to which Mayne said, "And what if the public doesn't like those sites?"
Answer: "They will have every opportunity to voice that."
• In August, when the city was still working toward two larger sites (250 beds each), Biskupski wrote to Department of Workforce Services Executive Director Jon Pierpont. In seeking state money to help identify five finalist sites and secure options for sale, she said the public would give input on the finalists.
"Community input will guide the selection of the final two sites," she wrote.
Later that month, the city's Homeless Site Evaluation Commission unveiled a timeline that included an October presentation of potential sites and a public hearing before the City Council.
The tune changed at the end of September, when the council got its wish to scrap the two-site plan and instead build four smaller shelters with 150 beds apiece.
The four-site model will lessen the impact on affected communities, council members said. But it will cost the city about $10 million more to build — a total estimated at about $40 million, according to the city's request for a designer — and it added to what was already a tall order for the city's real-estate arm — to identify available sites that met the criteria and could be closed on by year's end.
House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, has said that without progress, he feared the Legislature would discontinue funding the project during the upcoming session. He gave the city an ultimatum to select the sites quickly or let the state decide.
McCallum believes the shift to four sites necessitated a "sacrifice."
"In this case, the sacrifice was the public input period," she said.
Becker said he hesitates to be too critical of any mayor's siting decisions. During his two terms, he faced flak for the Public Safety Building, Eccles Theater, bike lanes and transit lines. But he might have handled things differently, he said.
"We were told these are the final sites and this is the way it's going to be. In my experience, we don't know everything about sites, even if we do good analysis. There's a reason to ... expose alternatives."
The city has said meetings between administration staff and small groups of council members were closed to the public in accordance with state law to preserve the city's bargaining power.
Becker said that was appropriate, but the city still should have stuck with its intent to let the public weigh in on a larger list before closing the deals. It could have retained its leverage, he said, by securing options to buy the sites at a fixed price.
"It seems to me the city may need to reopen this issue about what the sites will be," he said, adding that, if so, "it needs to happen quickly."
The city has said it's moving on to the next step of the engagement process by asking for input on designs at three workshops this month, though Biskupski left some wiggle room Tuesday in mentioning the city might rethink 653 E. Simpson.
City spokesman Matthew Rojas said plans to whittle the list of sites after public review of finalists were always tentative and that, yes, they changed when the city began to seek four sites.
Nevertheless, he said, "There was public engagement."
About 1,100 residents took part — either online or in five mid-June community workshops — in an effort to rate 16 potential guiding criteria.
Three of their top priorities were among the four afforded the greatest weight by the commission and city leaders: nearness to transportation and services and distance from the drug trade. Their No. 3 — "Design for safety using Crime Prevention through Environmental Design standards" — is written into the request for proposal for design.
And for what it's worth at this juncture, city officials will hear from the public at three affected community councils during the next week.
Twitter: @matthew_piper —
Upcoming engagement on shelter sites
Central City Community Council • At 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Public Safety Building's Community Room (475 S. 300 East), city officials are scheduled to appear.
Sugar House Community Council • At 7:50 p.m. Wednesday at Sprague Library's Community Meeting Room (2131 S. 1100 East), city officials are scheduled to appear.
Ballpark Community Council • At 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Taylor Springs Apartment Community Meeting Room (1812 S. West Temple), city officials are scheduled to appear.
Community workshops • From 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Jan. 11 at Salt Lake Community College's South Campus (1575 S. State Street, use east parking lot), the public is invited to give input on the design of the four shelters. Another workshop will be held 7 p.m. Jan. 18 at Nibley Park Elementary's Auditorium (2785 S. 800 East).