The Lacey City Council voted, 4-3, April 24 to adopt the law regulating homeless shelters in the city. The council made a change late in the process that bans a tent city and instead requires churches to shelter the homeless indoors.

Panza – a nonprofit group that supports Camp Quixote, Thurston County’s lone tent city – the group’s secretary and three residents who attend churches in Lacey challenged the law before the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board.

The arguments by attorneys for Panza and the city centered on one central question during the 90-minute hearing: Did the state Growth Management Act require the city to publish a new legal notice and schedule another public hearing once the City Council amended the law?

The state law, intended to curb urban sprawl, requires governments considering some land-use proposals to encourage public participation to resolve conflicts.

The state board is scheduled to issue its decision by Nov. 19.

Joseph Rehberger, attorney for the plaintiffs, argued that the city violated the law because it didn’t provide public notice after making a “material change that changed the entire impact and structure of the ordinance.”

“It enacted an entirely different ordinance,” he said.

Assistant city attorney David Schneider told the three-member board that the city was moving from having no regulations regarding housing the homeless – a “blank canvas,” as he put it – to adopting the regulations.

Within that context, he continued, the change wasn’t significant enough to require another public process.

“The city wasn’t trying to hide the ball. The city wasn’t trying to mislead anyone,” Schneider said. “The city was trying to allow churches to minister to the homeless.”

The City Council asked the Planning Commission to recommend regulations for housing the homeless in August 2007. Its direction came after Olympia and Tumwater adopted interim laws that have since become permanent regulating a tent city. Those laws were in response to the creation of Camp Quixote. The pastor for a Lacey church interested in hosting the tent city said it couldn’t do so if the city requires housing the homeless indoors.

The Planning Commission discussed the issue at five meetings between September and November and had a public hearing, documents say. In February it recommended a law similar to those adopted in Olympia and Tumwater.

By March, the council had deadlocked on whether to require churches to house the homeless indoors or outdoors. The first known draft of the new law, according to plaintiffs, was April 18, six days before the council approved it.