Home News Lack of On-Site Parking Hurts Church’s Case, Says the Mayor

Lack of On-Site Parking Hurts Church’s Case, Says the Mayor

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Second in a series

Re “Mayor Talks of Purity of Residential Parking Plan”

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Meghan Sahli-Wells. Photo, Todd Johnson.

For Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells, the core of the parking dispute between Grace Lutheran Church and residents of one block of Farragut Drive is as inarguably clear as a cloudless sky.

She maintains that the City Council should tread “very carefully.”

“If we go down the road of changing our parking restrictions because of an entity that is not a resident (the church), it changes the definition of what we are doing, and it changes the goal of the (residential parking) program.”

Ms. Sahli-Wells said “it makes me very nervous to go down that road.”

Aware that she was in what appeared to be a 4-1 minority during last Monday’s City Council discussion, she added, “I don’t want to go down that road.”

Was the mayor suggesting that a resident has more rights than an institution or a business?

A long pause followed.

“It depends on what you are talking about because that is a big statement,” she said.

Ms. Sahli-Wells was asked if the church’s rights were equally weighted with those of residents.

“If the church had on-site parking,” she said, “and they were looking for extra parking, it would be a better case than a church, or any business, with zero parking and zero plans for creating on-site parking.”

(To be continued)