The Inver Grove Heights City Council is scheduled to vote Monday on whether to allow plans for a non-traditional end-of-life care facility to move forward.

“The Bardo” is not considered hospice care or a nursing home. It’s an expansive home estate where former Mayo Clinic nurse Christin Ament said she and her team are re-imagining the options for living out your final days.

Ament said her experience in traditional medical settings spurred her to think outside the box and created a space surrounded by nature trails and gardens where families can process and grieve together.

“Just really putting the human back into this entire experience so that people can die well,” Ament said.

“This home was donated to us to be able to use, so it’s incredible… so our hope is to fill the beds and then provide support for family,” she added.

The home estate is complete with three sun-bathed bedrooms, where a few people at a time could spend their final weeks with round-the-clock support from staff and volunteers. Independent hospice care agencies would visit their patients there, coordinating medical care as they would with traditional home visits, Ament said. The Bardo would also provide a year of grief support for families.

“Imagine if everybody could come and just sit underneath an oak tree, just have some time to reflect, as opposed to sitting in a sterile environment with fluorescent lights and the smell of cleaners, and we all know that feeling. That’s not where we want to be at the end,” she said.

Ament, as the executive director of The Bardo, considers herself a “death doula.”

“A death doula is another national movement similar to the birth doula movement,” she explained.

“The hope of the death doula is to be able to kind of also fill in all of those gaps that the medical community doesn’t around end-of-life… filling out your advanced care directive and talking about who your caregivers are going to be and what kind of vigil you want when you die; What does your funeral look like? The death doula helps with all of that and the bedside at time of death.”

It’s not a new concept, she said, citing a growing nationwide movement and established practices in other U.S. cities. It is for Inver Grove Heights, though, and city officials have many questions.

For now, The Bardo is closed. Ament said she received a Cease and Desist letter from the city in the fall and has been back and forth to City Hall to address questions and concerns ever since, particularly about official oversight.

The Bardo is not a medical facility, Ament said, and state and Dakota County officials concluded there is not an applicable license to require, leaving the decision on whether the facility can re-open to the City Council.

Members are expected to vote Monday on whether the non-profit can operate in an estate residential zoning district.

If they approve the zoning amendment, Ament would then need to apply for a use permit.

Some members expressed concern that the amendment would “set a precedent,” allowing the possibility for many more of these facilities to pop up in neighborhoods.

Council member Mary T’Kach spoke in support of The Bardo, arguing the effect on noise levels in the area should be minimal to none. She and others noted the city needs additional end-of-life care facilities in general.

The lack of oversight remained a top concern during that recent meeting.

“We’re serving food. That’s a Department of Health… I don’t know… There’s nothing licensed here,” said City Council member Sue Gilva.

“I’m not saying anything bad will happen, but it just seems like a big risk to the city to have something without some kind of monitoring.”

“I get it,” Ament said, asked about the concern. “I think if I didn’t know, I would also have those same questions.”

She and other medically licensed staff are mandated reporters of abuse and neglect who could risk losing their licenses, she continued.

Although she and the staff would not be operating in a medical capacity, “that’s putting a really big pressure on all of us to be at the utmost operation of our medical license to make sure that everybody is kept really safe and really comfortable,” Ament continued, adding, hospice agencies will routinely visit as expected do in traditional home hospice care scenarios.

“And then thirdly, I believe that if we are offering poor services, hospice agencies and families and the community are not going to continue to come here,” Ament said.

“Let’s let the people decide where they want to go.”

Ament said her closest neighbors are on board, adding that they wrote letters of support to the City Council during this process.

The vote is expected during the 6 p.m. City Council meeting on Monday.