After months of debate and disagreement, the Orem City Council voted on a group home ordinance that added two subgroups and made locating a treatment center in a residential neighborhood a little harder.

The 7-0 vote at Tuesday night's meeting created a category for youth transitional living homes in addition to allowing assisted living facilities for elderly people in residential areas. The final draft also eliminates small transitional treatment facilities, which jump-started the most recent issue. At the June 27 meeting, representatives of Telos Transition and Timpanogos Family Services, both small homes for adolescents, said such a requirement would prohibit them from opening up more homes in the future.

"That's where we came up with the idea to create a new category for group homes," said Assistant City Attorney Steve Earl.

The ordinance would require the youth transitional homes to accept clients who are not a danger to the neighborhood and are not part of the juvenile justice system; potential clients could include children with behavioral problems or those who have had a poor relationship with their parents.

Debate Tuesday night was short, but it focused on numbers; City Councilwoman Karen McCandless asked if the city would consider six residents instead of eight. She acknowledged it wouldn't make a huge difference in the actual effects on the surrounding neighborhoods, but she thought the slightly smaller number would help neighbor relations.

"I'm just trying to see what would fit in with what we have in our neighborhoods," she said, while agreeing these were important and the city didn't have a lot of discretion because of federal laws. "I just am weighing this issue of how they are a commercial use."

Earl said in discussions with Telos and Timpanogos managers, they indicated eight residents was enough to keep them financially viable; Telos Transition owner Paul Verbecky indicated fewer than eight would put them out of business because of the cost of professional staff to help the boys.

"I'm just throwing this out," McCandless said. "I am not sure what the actual physical difference would be, but I know that your lives will be much easier if your neighbors are more accepting of what you're doing."

Verbecky admitted he didn't know how future neighbors would view them, but current neighbors don't have a problem with the treatment home, he said. He's pleased with the outcome, he said Wednesday, although he would have liked a slightly larger home allowed.

"They have a lot of misconceptions regarding group homes," he observed after meeting with council members on several occasions.

Patrick Beachley, the program director for Timpanogos, said he was happy with the vote; he was involved in the writing of the amendment, because had it passed as originally planned the company would not have been able to open any more homes. The original plan would have shut down all homes like theirs, he said.

"But they acted very responsibly in meeting the needs of citizens and the population that we serve," he said.

The vote, in which almost everybody involved went home satisfied, ended a long look at group homes that started in January when dozens of residents from a west Orem neighborhood came to a City Council with concerns about Utah Crossroads, a transitional living center for adult recovering drug and alcohol addicts that had opened in their neighborhood. The talk started with ways to more closely regulate the businesses, which are allowed in residential neighborhoods under the federal Fair Housing Act.

Halfway through the process, after Earl presented the proposed changes to the Orem Planning Commission -- no more than eight residents, at least three off-street parking stalls, getting rid of the spacing requirement necessitating a quarter-mile between similar facilities and allowing homes for elderly and disabled people only in residential areas -- Utah Crossroads owner Wade Holbrook shut down his business, citing too much opposition to succeed at his business plan.

Heidi Toth can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C4.