Re “No Parking Resolution in Sight Perhaps for a Year”
[Editor’s Note: “I feel neutral at this point,” Ilbert Phillips, attorney for parking-challenged Grace Lutheran Church, said this morning about last evening’s City Council meeting. “We did tentatively prevail. It could have been dismissed out of hand. It was not.” Other comments follow below.]
According to traffic engineer Gabriel Garcia, records show that the parking restrictions on Farragut Drive were imposed in 1982 and in 2004without a traffic study.
A traffic study was certainly required by law after 1989 for the restrictions imposed in 2014. Those restrictions extended the evening no-parking from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Anecdotal testimony has its limitations. It was clear that the record needs to be supplemented. Why do the minutes of the Council meeting in 1982 (with no mention of the church) assert that the commercial ventures on Overland Avenue were the problem that required the parking restrictions to be established on Farragut ?
What role should a 1957 variance granted the church play in imposing parking restrictions in 2014?
What steps has the church taken to alleviate its impact on parking since it does not have a lot?
(At one time the church was going to purchase property to its west, between Farragut Drive and Franklin Street, to provide parking. It presented its proposal to the neighbors who made it clear that they would fight a variance and never allow parking at that location).
Is it true that some of the church’s ministries are commercial ventures (the nature of which was not defined) as alleged by some homeowners?
The implication is that the church is using its facility to make a profit as opposed to doing what contemporary religious institutions do, provide social services as a part of its ministry as a church. The church denies it has any profit making ventures. The church will provide the Council with a list of the groups that meet and assemble at its facility and their function, such as various committees, the Church Board, the choir, AA groups, Meals on Wheels, the boy and girl scouts, dinners for the elderly and the homeless.
Mr. Garcia, the City Engineer, is to provide the Council with a report on what it would cost to perform a traffic study, how a proper study must be conducted and what other city traffic- related projects would be delayed if his office takes on a traffic study on Farragut. Mr. Garcia stated that if a traffic study is done, it would start sometime in February.
Mr. Phillips may be contacted at ilbert@ilbertphillips.com
