Merced City Council eyes opening warming shelter

Merced City Council spent most of its meeting Monday trying to brainstorm ideas for a warming shelter in town as the end of winter is about six weeks away.

City staff will look into the cost and feasibility of nightly running the warming shelter – a tarp tent filled with beds and space heaters. The council also told staff to look at partnering with the owners of a public building – for example, a room at the Merced County Fairgrounds – for nights that drop below 32 degrees.

The warming shelter, which has been offered by the Merced County Rescue Mission in the last two years, has not been open this year. City staff and mission volunteers have noted a number of problems that led to the decision not to open it this year.

The tent was moved last year from behind the Canal Street mission because there were concerns about the homeless that use the tent being in close proximity to children at a nearby church. So the tent was moved to the former juvenile hall on B Street, but that led to more complications.

The tent there was set up on top of wooden pallets, which put constraints on the space heaters used inside that might have led to fire hazards. Volunteers in the tent said the inside of the shelter was not much warmer than sleeping outside, and thus the tent drew few volunteers this year.

City Manager John Bramble said the tent needs to be placed on a paved area to be effective. The council told city staff to look into using the parking lot of the old hospital near D Street, as well as a city-owned parking lot near 24th and O streets.

The council agreed that the shelter, if opened by the city, should be available through March 15, when the weather should begin to warm up.

Councilman Kevin Blake said he expects that a public building could be available 10 or 20 days a year, his estimate regarding the number of times the Merced area temperature drops below 32 degrees. “I think there’s going to be a lot of viable options,” he said.

Councilman Josh Pedrozo said he was left scratching his head that no churches have come forward to allow the use of their building or to volunteer to staff the tent. “The fact that there’s no church that’s stepped forward to allow that seems kind of puzzling, since, like (Councilman Mike Murphy) said, there are so many churches in the community,” he said.

At the same meeting, the council unanimously decided to pay no more than $250,000 to fix depressions in the McNamara Park field that have kept people from using the newly renovated soccer pitches for nearly a year. Replacing some of the softer material under the pitches with gravel could make the field ready to go by spring, city staff said.

Discussions on whether the city or contractors are to blame for the faults in the field will continue, according to officials.

This story was originally published February 2, 2015 at 9:29 PM with the headline "Merced City Council eyes opening warming shelter."