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Written public comment urges Eureka Springs to limit size and placement of rehab facilities
Summary
A written public comment read into the record urged the city to adopt zoning rules limiting bed counts, caps on property acquisitions by single corporate providers, buffer zones from schools and mandatory discharge/transition protocols for residential treatment facilities; commissioners agreed to place zoning for treatment centers on a future agenda.
At the start of the planning portion of the meeting, Planning Director Cassie Dishman read a written public comment submitted “from Jay Fusaro of 21 Owen Street” that urged the city to adopt a zoning ordinance imposing capacity and siting restrictions on licensed drug rehabilitation and transition facilities.
The comment argued that Eureka Springs, described as a tourist town of about 2,000 permanent residents, cannot support “an institutional scale transient population” and listed four formal policy requests: strict bed-capacity limits per facility, caps on total property acquisitions by single corporate care entities, minimum buffer distances separating multi-patient facilities from schools and residential zones, and mandatory discharge and transition frameworks to ensure out-of-town participants are repatriated or transitioned out of town when a program ends.
The submission acknowledged federal legal limits on municipal regulation and anticipated the city attorney might cite the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act; the comment framed its requests as non-discriminatory, focused on commercial scale and density rather than protected classes. Commissioners placed “zoning for treatment centers” on the next meeting agenda for further discussion.
"A tourist town with only 2,000 permanent residents cannot support an institutional scale transient population without severely endangering local public safety," the written comment said (read by Cassie Dishman).
