Changes could allow daycare, bus garage in city

Changes that could affect the possibility of a daycare center in the central business district and a stand-alone garage to house two senior buses will be conisdered.

The city of Grand Coulee will hold a public hearing on a zoning change at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 15, in the council chambers at city hall.

A request by two women, Andrea Marconi and Angela Feeley, in March 2013, to place a licensed daycare center in a Main Street location was determined “not allowable” under central business district uses.

Mayor Chris Christopherson referred the matter to a council committee, which resurrected the idea this spring, and it along with the bus garage was scheduled for the public hearing process.

Marconi and Feeley told the council last March that a licensed daycare center was urgently needed by workers at the hospital, school district and Bureau of Reclamation, as well as others.

It was revealed at the time that a daycare center was allowable along the highway, but not in the central business district.

The Grand Coulee Dam Senior Center’s bus garage idea ran into a similar problem with zoning.

Senior Larry Curtis appeared several times before the council asking for a zoning change that would allow the construction of a garage to house two transport buses that are owned by the Senior Center. The garage would be built on land owned by the seniors and is adjacent to where the center is located.

Curtis told the council that a garage would protect the buses and allow the drivers to prepare the buses for transit inside where it would be reasonably warm.

A request by a resident of 431 Grand Coulee Avenue, Donovan Picard, to get a zoning change for his home mechanic business didn’t make it to the public hearing state.

Picard had run into trouble because he was doing mechanic repair work at his home garage in violation of residential zoning.

The city finally fined Picard $750 for the zoning violation and not having a business license. His appearance before the municipal judge to reverse the citation wasn’t successful.

The public will have its opportunity to speak to the zoning issues next Tuesday.