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)
