WALNUT CREEK — The City Council found itself unable Tuesday evening to decide how it should react to a crime inside the winter homeless shelter that is seeking permission to set up in the National Guard Armory near Civic Park.

It was a late-evening legalistic debate over whether a serious crime in the shelter “shall” or “may” result in its immediate shutdown.

The council seemed near a vote agreeing to a management contract specifying the conditions under which it would agree to permit 30 homeless people to be bused from the nonprofit Trinity Center to sleep in the armory overnight and bused back to Trinity for breakfast for 90 days this winter.

But concern for the nearby Carmel Drive residents’ fears of more homeless people coming into their neighborhood led to the debate how best to reassure them.

The draft management agreement had language giving city administrators and the police chief discretion to consider the circumstances of an incident.

Some council members balked at that and held out for an absolute statement that would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that one strike would shut it down.

The debate lasted past 11 p.m. for council members who had been meeting since 4 p.m. and they were noticing their fatigue.

So, the council unanimously decided to have Trinity Center and the city staff, including the police chief, work out the language.

The council also voted unanimously to ask the National Guard for a license to use the armory for the shelter. However, it was told that the guard had not yet responded to City Hall calls for confirmation that the armory can be used from mid-December through mid-March.

And the council agreed that Trinity Center can apply for the city permit it needs to set up the shelter.

In the draft management contract, the city declares it will shut down the shelter under a number of specific conditions that include physical violence inside the shelter, Trinity Center failing to make sure all residents are transported to the armory, and possession or consumption of alcohol or illegal drugs at or near the armory.

Also a cause for a shutdown: A 10 percent increase in transient or homeless related calls to the police from the larger neighborhood around the armory and Civic Park or a 20 percent increase downtown. Increases would be determined over a four-week period in relation to the 2015 monthly average.

The council on Tuesday enlarged the area around the armory to include Mt. Diablo Boulevard.
