I would like to compliment Bob Burns on his reporting of “Understanding sober living homes” in last week’s Times. He printed Andy Bennett’s letter to the P&Z in its entirety, pulling back the curtain on how this industry uses the discrimination cry to actually gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us.

Andy is an owner of Recovery Consultants and operates as the compliance officer of FH Recovery. Our P&Z seeks equity across the board while the detox industry uses discrimination to take advantage of residents and towns. Definitive studies prove that being in a home or business in close proximity to facilities of this industry lowers property values for residents. These businesses provide no significant revenue streams to the towns they inhabit. On the contrary, costs to the town increase with public safety decreasing and crime increasing.

While the article does confuse sober living with partial hospitalization, I believe Burns is merely reporting the confused perspective put forth by our own Town Services Director. Let’s not place too much blame on Mr. Wesley, either. The detox industry conflates their terms, causing the confusion in an effort to gain this advantage and bolster their cry of discrimination.

While our Council has sat around for a year and allowed these commercial businesses termed partial hospitals to proliferate in residential zoning, our P&Z seeks to create equity in our ordinances by modifying and changing some at the Monday, Feb. 14 meeting at 6 p.m. I encourage everyone to show up in support of your commission’s work and stop falling prey to the intentional misuse of terminology by the detox industry.

Send your concerns to our state officials as well, knowing that the state also has much work to do in this arena. It takes work to preserve value.