Sprinkler requirement ordinance tabled

By Jewels Phraner
April 8, 2008

Janet Wheeler, Vice President of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority Board of Directors, speaks to the Columbia City Council on Monday night. Wheeler said the council should "support all reasonable measures which have the potential to increase the safety and security of students."

City Council members ended up perplexed Monday night when faced with what to do about an ordinance that would require fraternity and sorority houses to have automatic sprinkler systems.

After a 95-minute public hearing and discussion, the ordinance was left untouched, and the possibility to make amendments to the ordinance was tabled until the parties involved could have more discussion.

“It was an afterthought that the Greek community was consulted,” said Skip Walther, a Columbia attorney who represents several Greek housing corporation boards.

Walther suggested the council facilitate a series of roundtable discussions between all the stakeholders to try to reach a compromise.

Discussions on the requirement started in May 1999, two weeks before the death of Sigma Chi fraternity member Dominic Passantino, who died in a fraternity house fire started from a lit candle.

Passatino’s mother Donna Passatino Henson spoke at the meeting asking the council to avoid repealing the ordinance.

“Please don’t allow my son to have died in vain,” she said.

Other members of the Greek community spoke against the ordinance, such as Tom O’Neal, the alumni adviser for the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity.

He said the Kappa Alpha chapter house does have fire sprinklers installed, but that it wasn’t the most cost-effective thing for the nonprofit organizations.

O’Neal asked the council members if any of them had sprinkler systems in their homes. None raised their hands.

“Right, you don’t because it’s not cost-effective,” he said.

Twenty-seven of the 38 Greek houses would need to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems at a cost of about $2-4 per square foot.

In January 2007, the Building Construction Codes Commission submitted a report proposing amendments to the city’s fire codes that require sprinkler systems to include fraternity and sorority houses. After a public hearing, the City Council passed the ordinance unanimously.

But 11 months later, the BCCC repealed its original report, asking the council to do the same with the ordinance.

This was just one of the issues that came forward during the council meeting. Fourth Ward City Councilman Jerry Wade said he came to several “disturbing conclusions” after reading the November report. He suggested the ordinance be repealed, and the council start over addressing the fire codes for all student housing, on- and off-campus.

“I thought it was an exceptionally unusual decision for (the BCCC) to reverse a decision,” Wade said.

The BCCC voted 7-3 to repeal its recommendation citing several concerns ranging from not giving fraternities and sororities enough time to secure funding for the major renovations to the issue of simply singling out MU’s Greek community.

Council members had concerns about repealing the ordinance completely because they were afraid of the image it would project.

“One of the reasons I’m concerned about repealing the ordinance is that I can see the headline: ‘Columbia City Council repeals fire sprinklers,’” Sixth Ward City Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe said.

Despite concerns, Wade motioned for the ordinance to be repealed, in order to start the process over.

“This is too important a policy to not develop the best possible ordinances. It’s better to step back, start over, so we can move forward to a better policy,” Wade said. “We need to not just announce a few meetings, just to say we did, then no one shows up. We need to aggressively go out and bring people together.”

A round of applause started by six MU fraternity members sitting in the back of the council chambers broke out as Wade finished his sentence, but the motion failed 4-3.

After much uncertainty, city attorney Fred Boeckmann offered a compromise: tabling the amendments until more discussion could take place.

The City Council approved tabling the amendments unanimously as well as forming several stakeholder discussions and an additional report summarizing the future discussions.

Thus, the 16-month debate will continue until a final report is submitted in January 2009.

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Sprinkler requirement ordinance tabled

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