It's easy to dismiss something as a case of "not in my back yard" when it's not your back yard.
Piney Ridge's new location isn't in my back yard. Piney Ridge runs a secure psychiatric residential facility for youth between the ages of 7 and 17 who suffer from sexual behavior disorders. It has a 102-bed center in Fayetteville that started out as a smaller facility in 1996. Piney Ridge's directors want to move the center by building a 138-bed facility in Springdale, with another 30 group home beds on site.
Many of the would-be new neighbors in Springdale object -- making the same points Fayetteville would-be new neighbors made in 1996. They're also making the same objections I'd probably make if Piney Ridge's new location was in my neighborhood. But I'd be remiss as an observer and commentator if I didn't point out what I found while looking through the newspaper archives on this issue.
There's only one real difference between the argument now and the argument of 20 years ago. Now Piney Ridge has a history. Two decades of newspaper archives about the Fayetteville location show no one being treated there causing injury to a neighbor.
I hope that somewhat relieves concerns for the proposed neighbors -- or at least doesn't make them mad because I couldn't find a solid, objection-worthy incident for them to use.
I can't promise that no bad thing will ever happen to a neighbor if Piney Ridge opens its new facility in Springdale. I can't promise no bad thing might yet happen to a neighbor at Piney Ridge if it stayed in Fayetteville, either. All I can say is that there's no history of it.
Opponents then and now say the facility should not be so near residences, much less a school or a park. Yet the new proposed site conforms to state law. A sexual rehabilitative program shall not be located within 1,000 feet of an elementary school, child care center or child care family home, that law says.
That 1,000-foot limit just so happens to be the same radius for the least-dangerous adult registered sex offenders on where they can live. More serious offenders can't live within 2,000 feet. I point this out to illustrate a further point. Adults, however, won't be clients at Piney Ridge.
Nobody needs a drawing compass and a map to figure out that these exclusion zones cover a lot of ground. In effect, increasing those restrictions push these abodes, group or individual, into more and more concentrated spaces -- or into the woods, which has practical disadvantage for anything from a treatment center to an apartment.
If the would-be neighbors in Springdale could go back in time and change the law to stop this, the last thing to do would be increase that radius of exclusion. They need to decrease it. That would have given Piney Ridge's management more options. I'm not kidding. The property selected must have, of necessity, fit the existing rules.
Northwest Arkansas has seen this kind of thing before. Back in 2012, a reporter at our paper noticed that adult, criminal sexual offenders on parole were all living in the same places. In east Rogers, four high-level offenders lived within a two-block span in trailers and apartments just off New Hope Road.
Some reporting showed that at more than two dozen locations throughout Benton and Washington counties, two or more serious offenders lived in the same neighborhood. In some instances in Rogers and Lowell, two offenders lived on the same block. And offenders classified as less dangerous lived nearby.
One apartment complex in Springdale had as many as seven high-level sex offenders in residence in 2011. The complex on Lowell Road was centrally located, lower-priced and outside restricted areas. There were a lot of kids there.
It's past time to take a hard look at whether these kind of rules do more harm than good. That's my main point today.
There's an objection that Piney Ridge hasn't released enough detailed plans. Asking an entity to go to the expense of having professionals draw up detailed plans for a project before they have the green light to proceed isn't a reasonable request.
Then there was the objection Piney Ridge might someday build recreational facilities outside the 10-foot-high fence around the main complex. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this ever happens, that's not a reasonable objection either. It's a treatment facility, not a prison.
Commentary on 12/10/2016