Not in my neighborhood, Savage residents tell council

Residents angry about three Level 3 sex offenders living in the old Spur Motel on Hwy. 13 gave the Savage City Council an earful last week.

Turns out they were wrong about some things.

An anonymous flier urging citizens to attend the meeting said the city "plans to make this motel a halfway house for sex offenders" and that there were "no letters sent out to inform the Savage community."

It is true that three Level 3 sex offenders moved to what is now the Savage Motor Inn in the 7300 block of W. Hwy. 13 between March 18 and April 29. But the motel is privately owned and city officials have absolutely no say in who rents rooms there, City Administrator Barry Stock told meeting-goers. The city has no plans to turn it into a halfway house, he said.

Letters informing residents of each of the three arrivals were mailed to homes within a half-mile radius of the motel as required by state law, the information was sent out on the city's InfoNet and Code Red systems, and local media got news releases, Police Chief Rodney Seurer said. Schools were notified and were asked to post the information in a public spot, he said.

Heather Jensen was one of about 50 residents who showed up for the meeting.

"We all feel like you guys did this very secretively behind our backs and didn't notify anybody," Jensen said. "The only thing put in the newspaper was on the last person. We want to know why this is OK in our city. We don't agree with this. We have a very big problem with it. We want answers."

Level 3 offenders are those considered by the state to be most likely to reoffend.

Both of the offenders have jobs. Neither of them drive or own vehicles. They wear GPS devices and are required to notify the Department of Corrections when they leave the motel, say how long they'll be gone and check in again when they return. Police also conduct random checks on them, Seurer said.

"We check on all predatory offenders, [Levels] 1, 2 or 3," he said.

Det. Laura Kvasnicka told residents at the meeting that there are 19 predatory offenders living in Savage. The two Level 3 offenders get the most scrutiny. Schools and day care centers are notified when Level 2 offenders move nearby if their crimes involve children, she said, but by law no public information can be released about Level 1 offenders.

Kvasnicka tried to assure residents that "residential proximity has little or nothing to do with the recidivism rate of offenders," adding, "That's why when sex offenders move out of the city, we don't notify residents," she said. "We don't want people thinking, 'Now we can let our guard down.' Rather than concentrate on a few Level 3 offenders in Savage, we need to all be vigilant."

"Maybe we can't as a city do anything about him allowing [them] to live there. But when was the last time the city went in with building permits to see if everything is legitimate? When was the last time anyone went in to see if there were pests? Those are ways you can legitimately put them on notice and eventually close them down."

Stock said the City Council was talking about doing just that at the previous meeting.

"We're going to do it," he said. "It has to do with housing maintenance and rentals."

Resident Raquel Groetken wasn't pacified, though.

"Where are our rights?" she asked. "This is the future of our children, the city of Savage, the state of Minnesota, our children. Where is the protection for our children? You say it's a motel, but how many more are you going to put in there?"

A few days after the meeting, Williams, the mayor, said the citizens at the meeting who said they didn't receive notification letters don't live within a half-mile radius of the motel. She said her main objection to the flier was the assertion that Savage was turning the motel into a halfway house.

"Those kinds of things cause false rumors and people to get unnecessarily concerned," she said, adding that she worries more about the criminals "who might be in our neighborhoods who haven't been caught yet."

Information about level 3 sex offenders in Minnesota, including photos and summaries of their cases, can be found at www.doc.state.mn.us/level3/Search.asp.