Applicant Dave Prohaska, left, and Jude House Executive Director Mary Lynn Logsdon, right, appear before the Charles County Board of Appeals Tuesday, Feb. 23.
La Plata, MD – There were so many people lined up to speak at the Charles County Board of Appeals hearing on the Jude House Halfway House proposed for a Bel Alton community Tuesday, Feb. 23, the board opted to wait until their March 8 meeting to make a decision on the proposed special exception.
Fifty-four people signed up to speak at the hearing, but not all of those got a chance to express their opinions as the public hearing stretched into the late evening hours.
“The government building switches over to an alarm system at 11 p.m.,” Charles County Planner Kirby Blass said. “We had to vacate the building.”
Blass noted that the board elected to allow written public comment until March 1 to allow citizens concerns and comments to be heard.
“That way, board members will have a number of days to review all of the comments,” he stated.
The applicant, Dave Prohaska and Jude House Executive Director Mary Lynn Logsdon, told the board the extension of the program, intended to house five women from the program undergoing intensive therapy for heroin addiction, is desperately needed.
Prohaska said when he first began renovating the house on Dove Drive in Bel Alton, he wasn’t aware that he needed a special exception to move forward with plans to convert the home to a halfway house. Once he found out, he said, they began immediately to undertake the process of moving forward.
He said assertions that the neighbors were not informed of their intentions was “simply not true.
“We met with our neighbors last November at the Bel Alton Firehouse,” he said. “We listened to all of their concerns.”
Logsdon said that there is a waiting list of 96 individuals waiting for a bed at the Jude House, nine of them from Charles County. She insisted that in the almost three years she has been director at the Jude House, there have been no fights or incidents at the facility.
“We don’t have damage, no broken windows or items stolen,” Logsdon noted. “Have there been disagreements? Yes. Shouting? Yes. But no fist has hit another person since I’ve been there.”
While Logsdon admitted there have been a handful of clients who have walked away from the facility in the past, they harbor no violent offenders in their program.
“Most of them are in jail,” she said. While some of their patients may have criminal records, most of that is in the form of possession charges for illegal substances, “which is why they are in the program in the first place,” Logsdon stated.
She added that the women would be monitored 24 hours a day and would only be at the home in the evening for showers, laundry and to sleep. The rest of the time they are in intensive training and therapy, she explained.
Most citizens who spoke at the hearing spoke out against the facility. James Thompson, who explained he has lived in the neighborhood for 31 years, said that “this facility does not reflect the needs of our neighborhood.”
Martin Culp said he volunteers for the Bel Alton firefighters and that they have had to run calls for disturbances at the Jude House, an assertion which left Logsdon shaking her head as he spoke.
When pressed for more information, Culp said he couldn’t recall “anything specific.”
Speaker Archie Verdiglione wanted to know why Jude House didn’t put the facility in a remote area that is not in a neighborhood.
“There is an abandoned house right across 301 from the Jude House sitting all by itself,” he said. “Why didn’t you put it there?”
Blass said that the board did call the applicants back up to the podium and told them that if the facility were approved, it would be with specific requirements.
“The board imposed additional conditions of use,” Blass explained.
The Board of Appeals is expected to rule on the special exception at its March 8 meeting, he said.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com
