Assisted-living project stuck on flood plan

by Rob Ruth

Plans for an assisted-living facility on Weiser’s east side are in most respects ready for implementation and have been for quite a while.
Developers, however, haven’t been having the easiest time satisfying local authorities’ demand for information about what happens in the event of a flood.

The challenge is one of giving local emergency response departments a workable game plan — complete especially with destinations — for transporting residents whenever the waters rise.

Weiser city officials and local law enforcement chiefs aren’t suffering from over-active imaginations. The site for the proposed facility lies in the 100-year floodplain and was underwater as recently as Jan. 1, 1997, the date of Washington County’s last big flood.

Mike Clayson of Weiser Development LLC applied to the City of Weiser over a year ago for a conditional use permit. It would allow construction of an assisted-living complex on his piece of bare ground located on the north side of East Commercial Street east of East Twelfth. His design calls for a complex serving 32 residents, but the permit would allow a facility occupied by as many as 42.

Weiser’s Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing on the application in December 2004 and voted to recommend that the Weiser City Council approve the conditional use designation. The P&Z attached 12 requirements the developer should be expected to meet, a list addressing technical issues related to construction.

After holding its own public hearing on Feb. 14, the city council also approved the application, but not without first adding one more requirement: the evacuation plan for a flood emergency.

For the project, the requirement has proven to be a real sticking point. Clayson returned to the council earlier this month to discuss what appears the only real hangup to finishing the plan: the city’s expectation that it will definitively state destinations for evacuees and possibly even the numbers of residents to be taken to the various evacuation centers.

Weiser Police Chief Greg Moon said he and Washington County Sheriff Marvin Williams wanted this kind of information because “it is going to be an extremely busy time” for emergency workers if a flood occurs. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we get there and they don’t have any plans for where to take the people.”

Clayson said the residential operation isn’t lacking a clear set of procedures for the emergency contemplated. For example, he explained, the procedures spell out that residents who walk with no physical supports will be transported first, residents who use canes will go next, and those in wheelchairs will be transported in the third and final wave. Staff will start evacuating residents upon notification from law enforcement of an impending flood.

What Clayson apparently cannot furnish, however, are letters from likely evacuation centers stating any commitment from those pro-perties’ owners. Almost undoubtedly, two initial destinations would be the Weiser LDS Church’s recreation center and the Weiser High School gym, but neither the church nor the school district is interested in giving any advance written guarantees to that effect. He says officers of both entities affirm support in conversations, “but they won’t just give us a letter saying if there’s a declared emergency we can come there.”

Clayson also stressed to city councilors that an evacuation plan is required by the state, and further, that the assisted-living facility is concern-ed with much more than just getting the residents to a dry location. When they arrive at an evacuation center, he said, they’re to have support of the residential facility’s staff.

Councilor Perry Plischke said the city board had good reason for demanding specifics because the property has a history of flooding. Councilor John Walker told Clayson the freshness of the New Orleans disaster also bore on city officials’ position. “With what’s going on in New Orleans lately, I think somebody would be remiss not to prepare for floods,” he said.

Walker also expressed sympathy for the developer’s plight, however. “We can require, require, require, and pretty soon require people out of business,” he said.

In the end the council instructed Clayson to merely furnish in writing all the details of an evacuation plan that he could, and suggested it’s possible city officials would find that the information adequately addressed their concerns.

--WEISER SIGNAL AMERICAN
11/30/05