3A Public Hearing 2008 0219 Supplement

Home

3. Traffic Impact. The City pretends there would be traffic problems because 14600 Catalina Court is supposedly located more than a quarter mile from an arterial street. If there were a compelling state interest lurking behind that deliberately overbroad and imprecise criteria, then it would be that traffic access at some locations is not adequate to handle a large assemblage. The City's failure to process a conditional use permit allows the City to deny the Church's application based upon an imaginary traffic problem. If the court orders the City to process a conditional use permit, the quantity of church traffic at Catalina Court will not turn out to create a compelling traffic problem, or any traffic problem at all. The traffic access to Catalina Court is superb and the traffic demand is at off peak hours. 4. Special Study Area. 14600 Catalina Court is located in a special study area. If Special Study area means that an area has some special planning considerations that need to be looked at, then by all means, those issues should be looked at. But, the burden is upon the City to demonstrate what it is about that study area which makes a religious assembly incompatible with existing or desired uses in the area. The fact that religious assembly is the purpose of the assembly, does not create a compelling state interest in its denial unless all assembly uses are prohibited. Equal treatment would then require the banishment of many existing employers from that area. Nor is that fact that a church is not a high tech software company a compelling state interest, unless the City can demonstrate that the mere presence of the church in that area would significantly discourage high tech software companies from locating in adjacent buildings. There are too many cities in which churches coexist successfully with high tech businesses for that concern to be rational or credible. If the City does not know what it wants to happen in a special study area, that confusion cannot be permitted as an open ended "compelling state interest" justifying separate but unequal treatment of religious assembly v. commercial assembly in the study area. 5. Public Health and Safety. The City knew that an astute judge might well apply the compelling state interest test mandated by RLUIPA. For that reason, the Staff Report reached out to find a public health and safety issue. Saying the magic words "public health and safety" and "hazardous materials" is not enough to pass the compelling state interest test without strict judicial scrutiny of the actual facts. In cynically proffering the threat that there are businesses with approved hazmat plans within 1/ mile, the City planners inadvertently blundered into the Building and Fire Codes in which the standards are written, objective, fairly administered, and publicly known. It turns out that not a single one of the 196 properties rezoned to AU Overlay is more than 1/ mile from a business with a hazmat plan. Then the City cynically says in its brief (at Defendants Memorandum of Points and Authorities, p.20) that it can just waive that urgent criteria for the separate but equal properties down by them two railroad tracks. This completely undercuts the City's argument, because if separating assembly uses from hazmat plans is compelling on Catalina Court, then such separation would also be compelling down by them two railroad tracks. And, there is un -contradicted evidence in the administrative record from Paul Gannt, an expert in the field, that there is no serious health and safety concern with the kinds of uses actually surrounding 14600 Catalina Court. None of the reasons put forth by the City pass the "compelling state interest" test. In fact, they were they narrowly tailored (after the initial application) to maximize interference with religious assembly, rather than to minimize interference with religious assembly.