November 29. 2005

Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
By Lee Hammel TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF lhammel@telegram.com

WORCESTER- The City Council hearings on the siting of social services opened last night amid encouragement for the city to crack down on the sitings and a warning that it could be illegal to do so.

A joint meeting of the council's Health and Municipal Operations committees attended by 75 people aired proposals by the Mayor's Social Service Task Force and the Worcester Regional Research Bureau. The mayor's task force urged voluntary measures by social services programs to notify officials and neighbors before the programs open and to make
payments to the city in lieu of taxes.

It also urged the city to create a position to coordinate the siting of social service programs, to lobby the state to establish guidelines requiring the programs to make half-mile radius maps pinpointing other social services, and to give incentives to communities that lack social service programs to accept them.

The research bureau said that wet shelters and sober houses have been receiving protection from local zoning laws when they are not entitled to them. It singled out five sober houses proposed by the South Middlesex Opportunity Council, particularly one for 2 June St., as being
inadequately supervised intrusions in residential neighborhoods.

The bureau said that Worcester State Hospital or brownfield sites would be better places to isolate neighborhoods and substance abusers from each other.

After task force co-chairmen Maurice Boisvert and Robert Spellane explained incentives such as having the state itself make payments in lieu of taxes for social programs and the difficulty of finding common ground among the diverse interests in the mayor's task force, District 2 Councilor Philip P. Palmieri seemed less than impressed.

Saying that he believes it is necessary for the heads of social service agencies to change their attitudes, the councilor said, "I don't see much has changed."

He said he agrees with the agencies that the social services are of great benefit to the city. But he questioned why his council district
and District 4 have 80 percent of the social services in the city and why communities outside of Worcester, such as Paxton and Sutton have few or no social services. "I just ask that they help other communities," he said.

"As good as this report is, more needs to be done," Mr. Palmieri added.

But Jonathan Mannina, litigation director of the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts, said even the voluntary nature of the mayor's task force may go too far. He said advance notification of programs to neighbors and officials and mapping sites potentially runs afoul of the U.S. Fair Housing Act's prohibition on treating people with disabilities differently from those without disabilities.

Mr. Mannina, whose organization recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to enforce the fair housing act, said even voluntary guidelines can be seen as coercion because the city distributes community development block grants that some agencies depend on.