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Highland Park workshop refers draft detention‑center zoning language to planning commission after legal review
Summary
At a Highland Park council workshop, legal advisers said the city's zoning ordinance already omits detention facilities and recommended clarifying definitions (including 'essential services') to prevent those uses; council members agreed to send revised language to the planning commission for public review, with a likely April 8 hearing.
At a Highland Park council workshop, members and legal advisers reviewed a proposed ordinance aimed at blocking federal detention facilities and agreed to refer clarified zoning language to the planning commission for formal review and a public hearing.
Mister Smith, who led the city's legal analysis, told the council the city's existing table of uses does not list detention centers, jails or prison sites and therefore those uses are presently not permitted. "Nowhere on that table will you find a detention center, a jail, a prison site," Smith said, and recommended reinforcing definitions (A, B and C in the draft) and tightening the definition of "essential services" so a detention facility could not be reclassified as a utility or essential service.
The clarification, Smith said, is intended to guide…
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