Haley Murphy's Response to Message from Raven Hills Homeowners Association [#XN1572735]
As the Raven Hills HOA Board acknowledged in their community email earlier today, I, along with Mary Jenkins, was removed from the Raven Hills Architectural Control Committee (ACC) for speaking in support of the child care home at City Council. I believe this action was explicitly retaliatory, and the Board knows I feel this way. The Board has expressed they feel I disrespected and blindsided them at City Council, to which I ask: Is it "disrespect" to simply present a different perspective? Is it a "blindside" to present a factual recounting of reality? To be sure, my position was opposite that of the Board, but I am confident I gave a factually accurate and honest statement (provided below), whereas there were countless numerous lies and misrepresentations in the Board's presentation - falsehoods that they have repeated to the community more than once. Yes, I expressed my issues with how the Board has handled this publicly, because they took this issue to a public forum - and because they bulldozed and dismissed me in my efforts to raise these concerns privately.
Representation: I would like to point out that, despite a campaign that involved members of the Board actively and repeatedly soliciting letters of opposition from the community, only 37 households filed their concerns with the City. The Board falsely represents “nearly 50” in their letter of appeal, and claimed 80% in their presentation just now, but an audit of the City’s public comment records for this project found letters of opposition from only 37 unique addresses within Raven Hills boundaries. That’s just 16% of the 220 homes in Raven Hills. Further, over 70% of the letters of opposition were sent to the city only after the Board sent email blasts out to the entire Raven Hills community, soliciting letters of opposition specifically, and telling homeowners it was urgent they send opposing statements to the project planner. The Board took no efforts to ask the community at large if we were opposed; instead, they told us we should be opposed, sought letters confirming their bias, and likely artificially inflated the appearance of opposition to this project you see today.
Value: While the Board is claiming, anecdotally, that a child care could harm the property values in Raven Hills, I have with me today multiple academic journal articles, demonstrating through empirical evidence, a positive relationship, often substantially, between house prices and the number of childcares within close proximity. I work in academia and have spent hours combing through academic research journals, conducting a meta-analysis of relevant articles, and I could find no statistically significant negative impacts on house prices near or very near childcares. These studies demonstrate a close proximity to a childcare has a significant and positive effect on the prices of surrounding houses, and Ms. Warren’s childcare has the potential to increase - not decrease - the value of the homes in Raven Hills.
Noise and Traffic: According to Academy School District 20, 355 students currently attend Rockrimmon Elementary School. Adding cars for 12 more students would increase traffic by just 3%. As someone who personally deals with the traffic on Mikado multiple times a day, I can attest the impact of any added traffic on the community would be negligible. Pretending the impact of 12 children at Ms. Warren’s home would be tenable over 355 children at Rockrimmon is, quite frankly, absurd. I work from home and I pass by 50 Mikado Dr. on a near daily basis, including during Ms. Warren’s operating hours, and – because of how well she manages the children in her care – I had no idea she was running a childcare home until after the city mailed the post cards to our community.
Character: Prior to the City sending postcard notices to the community, our HOA Board was oblivious to Ms. Warren’s operations. This is evident in their own language from an email they sent to the community on December 8th. It read: The Board has become aware very recently that the owner of 50 Mikado Drive East has filed an application with the City to run a daycare. At this point, Ms. Warren had already been running her childcare on Mikado Dr. for nine months, in a manner so unnoticeable, and so well blended with the character of Raven Hills, that the Board by their own admission did not know about it. How negatively can this child care be impacting the community if the community didn’t realize it existed? If you review the recording of the City Planning Commission meeting on March 8th , you’ll see a Board member dancing around this fact before finally admitting it to be true. I truly believe had the City not needed to send postcards drawing attention to this project, the HOA would still be unaware of the presence of Ms. Warren’s childcare home to this day.
Safety: It is my opinion that the greatest threat to safety tied to Ms. Warren’s childcare home is not the childcare at all, but the behavior of members of the Board, who have been regularly observed sitting outside Ms. Warren’s house and have been seen (and publicly admitted to) following parents and stalking children leaving the neighborhood in the name of doing their “due diligence”.
I have made the Board aware of the State statute that forbids HOAs from prohibiting childcare homes. They haven’t issued CCR violations for this childcare home because they know doing so is forbidden by state law. I have made the Board aware of the fact that, after the implementation of the City’s new Unified Development Code, Ms. Warren will be permitted to operate her childcare home by-right. I have asked them to share these regulations with the Raven Hills community, and they have refused. I have offered my professional expertise in regulatory compliance to help members of the Board better understand this situation, and they have rejected it. Instead, this Board has chosen to spend the City’s time and resources, and the very sparse funding available to our HOA, to pursue appealing a project to which only 16% of households in the Raven Hills community have objected. They have propagated misinformation of truth along the way, including a firehose of misinformation in their presentation just a few minutes ago.
The Board’s appeal relies on cherry picking partial and false truths, on misrepresenting Ms. Warren and her work, and on their obvious misunderstanding of and refusal to accept the regulatory components at play. Their unsubstantiated claims of regulatory non-compliance stem only from complaints they admitted at the City Planning Commission meeting in March to have filed themselves. I am ashamed to live in a community represented by individuals content to haphazardly throw things at the wall, hoping something might stick, with zero regard for the slanderous defamation of character they drag Ms. Warren through along the way.
So, to the employees of the City, I must apologize for the way members of the Raven Hills Board have chosen to navigate this process, and I hope you know their actions do not represent the Raven Hills community as a whole. I was horrified when Commissioner Briggs had to address the way people have been behaving and how they have been treating the City’s civil servants. I am so sorry members of our Board have taken to attacking the integrity with which you do your jobs in their efforts to undermine the validity of this permit. I trust you do your work thoroughly and well, from a neutral position, and for the benefit of the community, and I thank you for that.
To Ms. Warren – Stacie, I am so sorry a loud minority in the community you call home have dragged you through all of this. And I’m sorry I’ve not been a louder advocate for you. I was afraid I would become the target of the retaliatory and bullying behaviors of members of our Board – and I am so sorry you now know what that experience feels like, too. I hope I can begin making it up to you today.
Finally, to the City Council members, I humbly ask you to please deny this appeal and choose to uphold the Planning Commission’s action to approve the conditional use plan for 50 Mikado Drive.
I encourage you to look beyond the continued misdirection of the Raven Hills HOA Board. You don't have to take my word for it; I hope you'll engage with these resources to make your own decision: You can find a recording of the City Council meeting here. You can find coverage of the appeal in the Colorado Springs Gazette, here. I find it quite telling the Board included neither of these in their communication to Raven Hills homeowners.
As a reminder:
- State law forbids HOAs from prohibiting child cares. As a result, the Raven Hills Covenants prohibiting child cares are void under state law.
- The new Colorado Springs Unified Development Code grants homeowners the right to run home child cares without a permit. Beginning June 2023, operating a child care out of your home is a use the City grants by right.
- The child care in question is fully licensed and permitted by the state and city.
- The city of Colorado Springs has now denied the action of the Raven Hills Board twice: once at the Planning Commission meeting in March, and now again at City Council in April.
Finally, I've included the full text of my speech below (and will be providing a summary of Kris Anderson's misrepresentations, and City Council's reaction, in a subsequent post).
Statement of Haley Murphy at City Council on Tuesday, April 11th, pertaining to the conditional use permit for 50 Mikado Drive East:
Thank you so much for hearing my voice today. My name is Haley Murphy. I grew up in Rockrimmon, and my husband and I now own our own home on Mikado Ln, about ¼ mile from the development site. I also sit on the Raven Hills HOA’s Architectural Control Committee. I believe the services Ms. Warren provides to the Raven Hills community promotes the values, character, and qualities of our neighborhood and has the potential to increase our property values. I’m here today to speak in opposition of the appeal filed by my HOA.Representation: I would like to point out that, despite a campaign that involved members of the Board actively and repeatedly soliciting letters of opposition from the community, only 37 households filed their concerns with the City. The Board falsely represents “nearly 50” in their letter of appeal, and claimed 80% in their presentation just now, but an audit of the City’s public comment records for this project found letters of opposition from only 37 unique addresses within Raven Hills boundaries. That’s just 16% of the 220 homes in Raven Hills. Further, over 70% of the letters of opposition were sent to the city only after the Board sent email blasts out to the entire Raven Hills community, soliciting letters of opposition specifically, and telling homeowners it was urgent they send opposing statements to the project planner. The Board took no efforts to ask the community at large if we were opposed; instead, they told us we should be opposed, sought letters confirming their bias, and likely artificially inflated the appearance of opposition to this project you see today.
Value: While the Board is claiming, anecdotally, that a child care could harm the property values in Raven Hills, I have with me today multiple academic journal articles, demonstrating through empirical evidence, a positive relationship, often substantially, between house prices and the number of childcares within close proximity. I work in academia and have spent hours combing through academic research journals, conducting a meta-analysis of relevant articles, and I could find no statistically significant negative impacts on house prices near or very near childcares. These studies demonstrate a close proximity to a childcare has a significant and positive effect on the prices of surrounding houses, and Ms. Warren’s childcare has the potential to increase - not decrease - the value of the homes in Raven Hills.
Noise and Traffic: According to Academy School District 20, 355 students currently attend Rockrimmon Elementary School. Adding cars for 12 more students would increase traffic by just 3%. As someone who personally deals with the traffic on Mikado multiple times a day, I can attest the impact of any added traffic on the community would be negligible. Pretending the impact of 12 children at Ms. Warren’s home would be tenable over 355 children at Rockrimmon is, quite frankly, absurd. I work from home and I pass by 50 Mikado Dr. on a near daily basis, including during Ms. Warren’s operating hours, and – because of how well she manages the children in her care – I had no idea she was running a childcare home until after the city mailed the post cards to our community.
Character: Prior to the City sending postcard notices to the community, our HOA Board was oblivious to Ms. Warren’s operations. This is evident in their own language from an email they sent to the community on December 8th. It read: The Board has become aware very recently that the owner of 50 Mikado Drive East has filed an application with the City to run a daycare. At this point, Ms. Warren had already been running her childcare on Mikado Dr. for nine months, in a manner so unnoticeable, and so well blended with the character of Raven Hills, that the Board by their own admission did not know about it. How negatively can this child care be impacting the community if the community didn’t realize it existed? If you review the recording of the City Planning Commission meeting on March 8th , you’ll see a Board member dancing around this fact before finally admitting it to be true. I truly believe had the City not needed to send postcards drawing attention to this project, the HOA would still be unaware of the presence of Ms. Warren’s childcare home to this day.
Safety: It is my opinion that the greatest threat to safety tied to Ms. Warren’s childcare home is not the childcare at all, but the behavior of members of the Board, who have been regularly observed sitting outside Ms. Warren’s house and have been seen (and publicly admitted to) following parents and stalking children leaving the neighborhood in the name of doing their “due diligence”.
I have made the Board aware of the State statute that forbids HOAs from prohibiting childcare homes. They haven’t issued CCR violations for this childcare home because they know doing so is forbidden by state law. I have made the Board aware of the fact that, after the implementation of the City’s new Unified Development Code, Ms. Warren will be permitted to operate her childcare home by-right. I have asked them to share these regulations with the Raven Hills community, and they have refused. I have offered my professional expertise in regulatory compliance to help members of the Board better understand this situation, and they have rejected it. Instead, this Board has chosen to spend the City’s time and resources, and the very sparse funding available to our HOA, to pursue appealing a project to which only 16% of households in the Raven Hills community have objected. They have propagated misinformation of truth along the way, including a firehose of misinformation in their presentation just a few minutes ago.
The Board’s appeal relies on cherry picking partial and false truths, on misrepresenting Ms. Warren and her work, and on their obvious misunderstanding of and refusal to accept the regulatory components at play. Their unsubstantiated claims of regulatory non-compliance stem only from complaints they admitted at the City Planning Commission meeting in March to have filed themselves. I am ashamed to live in a community represented by individuals content to haphazardly throw things at the wall, hoping something might stick, with zero regard for the slanderous defamation of character they drag Ms. Warren through along the way.
So, to the employees of the City, I must apologize for the way members of the Raven Hills Board have chosen to navigate this process, and I hope you know their actions do not represent the Raven Hills community as a whole. I was horrified when Commissioner Briggs had to address the way people have been behaving and how they have been treating the City’s civil servants. I am so sorry members of our Board have taken to attacking the integrity with which you do your jobs in their efforts to undermine the validity of this permit. I trust you do your work thoroughly and well, from a neutral position, and for the benefit of the community, and I thank you for that.
To Ms. Warren – Stacie, I am so sorry a loud minority in the community you call home have dragged you through all of this. And I’m sorry I’ve not been a louder advocate for you. I was afraid I would become the target of the retaliatory and bullying behaviors of members of our Board – and I am so sorry you now know what that experience feels like, too. I hope I can begin making it up to you today.
Finally, to the City Council members, I humbly ask you to please deny this appeal and choose to uphold the Planning Commission’s action to approve the conditional use plan for 50 Mikado Drive.