By Lisa Shinn

Early last year, alarming information became available to the Colville community during a regular Planning Commission meeting. State officials created a mandate that will require rural communities to allow Washington state-funded behavioral health facilities (BHFs) to be built in their towns. The state maintains it also has the right to relocate an undetermined number of patients from big cities to the rural BHFs. The information prompted many people to attend meetings to learn more. The past year brought many more meetings, public testimonies, and then the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee.

The Ad Hoc Committee, formed by the Planning Commission, was asked to consider relevant issues and create a draft ordinance to govern the siting of new behavioral health facilities in Colville. All committee members put in significant hours researching and thoughtfully discussing the issues. The committee completed its work, including a detailed recommendation to the Planning Commission, in May.

The Ad Hoc Committee recommendation was the primary Planning Commission agenda item on June 2, 2025. The Planning Commission will give their recommendation to the city council. The city council will submit their draft city ordinance to the Washington State Department of Commerce for their approval; once approved, the city will then adopt the Behavioral Health portion of the City Ordinance.  

A couple things that I hope will be accomplished prior to a final decision by the city council:

• The city council needs to contract a qualified attorney to research the legality of this state mandate which appears to violate the liberties and property rights of individuals protected in our Washington State Constitution. Citizens have appealed to councilmembers to do this and have been ignored, so the people need to get involved.
• Even though the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) states that local comprehensive plans have no authority in this matter, the community must consider what it would turn into if a number of these BHFs were built and housed with an influx of behaviorally ill patients. If state grants fund building (which could include multiple types of facilities), how will this impact the culture and economy? Will an economy that is predominantly weighted with taxpayer-funded social services be a sustainable or economically resilient economy?

Prior to attending the meetings early last year I was among the vast majority in this county who had no knowledge of the state’s plans for moving BHFs into rural communities.  

My takeaway is this: If we want to maintain any semblance of liberty and our rural community culture, we must all get serious about being more informed and involved with local and state issues.

Background of the BHF issue

Community-based behavioral health facilities are a grant-supported initiative at the state level intended to disperse behavioral health facilities and patients throughout Washington state. There are currently 14 different types of BHFs, plus multiple types of housing. The patients may include drug addicts, sex offenders and mentally ill individuals. Many of these patients have been living in mental institutions, but are now considered safe to be released, and many of them are homeless.  

When Contract City Planner Aaron Qualls (based in Sandpoint, Idaho) presented the BHFs mandate to the Colville City Council and Planning Commission he assured them that Colville is required by law to accept the facilities and patients, and that the BHFs come with money to build the facilities (funded by taxpayers via state grants). He advised them that if there are no zoning policies in place, the facilities could be placed anywhere within Colville, including residential areas without regard to distance from parks or schools, such as the recently approved expansion of the Crisis House operated by New Alliance.   

After dozens of residents in the community voiced serious concerns about the impact of all those facilities and patients being placed in Colville, Planning Commission member Lou Janke presented his reasons to the commission for creating an ad hoc committee to include representation from the community. Based on his recommendations, the city council passed a six-month moratorium on accepting any applications for building behavioral health facilities so that the Ad Hoc Committee could work with the Planning Commission to make recommendations. As it became obvious that the process would not be completed within the first six-month moratorium, another six-month moratorium was passed.

The Department of Commerce only allows two six-month moratoriums. 

A special committee was formed

The committee’s task was to take an inventory of the community’s current low-income housing and BHFs, assess the likely impact of the mandated BHFs and influx of behavioral health patients who would be moved into the community, draft the city ordinance for BHFs to help mitigate their impacts on the community, and to then report its findings to the Planning Commission (they call this “the recommendation”). 

The Planning Commission accepted applications from the community to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee and five community members were selected to serve along with Lou Janke (chair), Planning Commission member Jeff Pitts, Dave Harper (director of Public Works), Sydney Gilmore (project compliance and contract specialist), and Aaron Qualls (contract city planner).  

The community members selected to be on the Ad Hoc Committee were: 

• Deborah Smith, a seasoned RN who is gifted at research 
• Leeanne Shannon, a retired critical care registered nurse, whose energy and commitment to the work was remarkable 
• Bill Tusken, who worked for the state of Minnesota in social services years ago when mental health facilities were being closed and the patients were placed into communities (Bill’s insights were pertinent to this situation) 
• Leslie Waters, a retired local medical doctor who was committed to ensuring that the Colville community does its fair share in accepting patients 
• and Lisa Shinn, owner of Coffee & Books in Town Center and volunteer EMT with Stevens County Fire District #5.  

The committee’s goals and work

The first Ad Hoc Committee meeting was January 15, 2025. Each member was given a large binder that included the primary Revised Codes of Washington (RCWs) and WACs related to these facilities, a Model Ordinance supplied by the Washington State Department of Commerce, along with many other documents to review.  The committee was to draft the BHF portion of the Colville City Ordinance (based on the Model Ordinance provided). Following are excerpts from the documents:

RCW 36.70A.200: Essential public facilities include those that are typically difficult to site, such as opioid treatment programs and recovery residences as well as inpatient facilities such as substance use disorder treatment and mental health.

WAC 365-196-550: The WAC states that no ordinance or zoning can make a BHF difficult to site in their community. In (3)(a), it states that cities and counties may not use their comprehensive plan or development regulation to preclude the siting of essential public facilities. In (3)(a)(iii), it states that even requiring a provision to determine a need for a particular type of facility may be considered preclusive.

Department of Commerce Behavioral Health Model Ordinance: “Courts have ruled that unsubstantiated generalized community fear is an irrelevant consideration when deciding where to site essential public facilities. Further, RCW 36.70A.200(5) provides that no local comprehensive plan or development regulation may preclude the siting of essential public facilities.” (Model Ordinance p.5) 

“An Operations Plan should be submitted as part of the permitting process; however, this plan is for informational purposes only and jurisdictions do not have authority to approve or reject the plan contents.” (Model Ordinance P.13)

Review of current services and needs

The committee proceeded to compile the list of Colville’s current BHFs and low-income housing. It is a surprisingly long list of publicly assisted and privately funded low-income housing and BHFs. These facilities are already here because over the years the community built them as they were deemed necessary to meet local needs.    

Over several weeks interviews were conducted with local departments and agencies to determine what types of behavioral services might be lacking in the community, and to try to ascertain the impact of introducing new BHF facilities in Colville.  

In addition, Zoom conferences were held with state agencies to ask specifics about the mandate. It was evident that the state agencies did not know how many facilities, how many of each type of facility, or how many patients might be sent to Colville.  

Crafting a local ordinance

Next, the committee worked through the zoning assignment and then spent a considerable amount of time crafting language in the draft city ordinance regarding safety criteria for the different types of facilities, including a recommendation to require an in-house security officer for inpatient facilities and to establish a requirement for BHFs to be 880 feet away from schools and other public establishments.    

The committee met a couple hours each week for three months, plus individually did many hours of research. However, it became obvious that the task had a very narrow predetermined outcome (reference the RCW, WAC, and Model Ordinance). The task might have become discouraging, but the committee was focused on doing its best to protect the community.

The work of the Ad Hoc Committee is now complete, and the committee’s work is available on the City of Colville website, including audible recordings of the meetings and all printed materials.

Lisa Shinn is the owner of Coffee & Books in Town Center, located in downtown Colville.