A Response to the Statesman Article
Since Monday (Jan. 28), we've become famous, or I should say, "infamous", as the church who is suing the city because of an article that appeared in the Austin American Statesman. Unfairly, we've been identified as the environmentally unfriendly church because of our desire to have more parking on our land. There are some important background facts that need to be conveyed:
It is true that on December 20 we filed a petition in federal court for relief from the city's actions under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. What was not mentioned in the article is that for the last two years we have petitioned the city council to simply hear our case. Last March, we launched a formal request with the hopes of a hearing before the council. By October, we had received no response from the City Council; therefore, we formally asked for an open hearing at the November City Council meeting. We indicated then that, if there was no response, we had no other recourse but to petition the Federal Court for a hearing to judge the validity of our case concerning violation of the Church's procedural due process rights and to issue an injunction mandating the city to issue the Church a permit for expansion of the parking lot on our property. The city made no effort to contact us. Until Monday, we had no indication that the city had even considered our case. It was in the Statesman article that we learned that our petition had been denied in a closed-door session! Legal action has seemed our only recourse in light of being ignored.
Secondly, we sincerely care about the water quality of the Barton Creek watershed. Before considering a petition to build a parking lot, we consulted with Carl Connally, the environmental engineer who originally studied and mapped the topography of the property. He has designed an environmentally-friendly way to expand our parking. The location we've proposed for placing the parking area would have no negative impact on Williamson Creek. (See the image above, showing the site plan that reflects the direction of the water flow, etc.) Since our initial discussions with representatives of the City water quality board, we have committed to providing additional detention pond capacity, increase reasonable sprinkler system dispersion capacity, and use any approved semi-pervious material for parking surface. They never considered our offer.
Finally, the Statesman article gave the impression that we intend to pave all of the undeveloped land behind our buildings. There are more than six acres there with large, beautiful oak trees covering the back two acres leading down to the creek. We need only a small portion of the land that drains toward Monterey Oaks for parking. If our auditorium were filled to maximum capacity we would be parking our cars on no more than 20% of the undeveloped land (less than 1.2 acres). The proposed site plan shows that the additional parking we seek would be directly behind our building - it wouldn't even be visible from Monterey Oaks. The oak trees would be left in tact. In fact, plans are underway to create recreation fields and a park in the wooded area which will be OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
We love this city. We love the people of this city. We appreciate the natural beauty of our city. We want to honor and support the leaders of our city. Our legal action is not meant to be mean-spirited or acrimonious. We simply believe we have good reason to have a few more parking spaces. Our name: "Hope in the City" reflects our desire to serve our city through offering the hope that only Jesus Christ can bring.
Ron Parrish - Senior Pastor, Hope in the City
January 30, 2008