Looks like a trend is developing ... The Society can seem to win anything this past week.
http://www.newsregister.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=167779
Church sign saga ends with rejection
Published: June 28, 2003
By NICOLE MONTESANO
Of the News-Register
After spending $700 on application fees, representatives of a Jehovah's Witnesses Church left a McMinnville Planning Commission meeting frustrated and angry Thursday night, without waiting for a vote whose outcome they already knew.
The church has been seeking permission to put in a larger identification sign than is allowed under city code so that it can list the church's full name - Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses - in both English and Spanish. The church hosts two congregations, one English-speaking, the other Spanish-speaking.
Commissioners unanimously denied the request. The church may appeal the commission's decision to the city council within 15 days of the meeting.
The city allows just one 6-square-foof sign for identification. The church said it can't fit its full name twice on a sign that size and have the letters be legible from the street. It wants to put in a 12-square-foot sign, 2 feet wide by 6 feet long.
However, the city said the request doesn't meet any of the strict criteria under which such a variance would be permitted. There are four criteria.
They are: extraordinary circumstances applying to the property in question that do not apply to other properties; a need to preserve the same property rights others in the area enjoy; lack of harm to the purpose of the ordinance and a change that is the minimum necessary to alleviate the hardship.
Planning commission members and city staff said that although they wanted to approve the request, they couldn't legally do so.
The situation is replete with irony.
The code was written to keep large signs from dominating residential neighborhoods and to create a uniform look throughout the city. Staff said in their written report that it thought the request would be detrimental to the ordinance by setting a precedent "that would allow larger signs to be constructed on church sites in residential zones throughout McMinnville, without clear criteria or justification as to what an appropriately sized sign is or should be."
Yet the church can legally put up a 30-square-foot sign by combining its identification sign with a reader board, like the one used by The Salvation Army on West Second Street. However, it can't use the readerboard portion to post its name. That can be used only for listing information, such as service dates and times.
Furthermore, the church doesn't want the readerboard, and has offered to give it up in exchange for a larger identification sign. The proposed sign is not only quite a bit smaller but is also considerably more attractive, planning commissioners agreed. But the city code doesn't allow that kind of tradeoff.
Several other churches in McMinnville have signs larger than the one being sought by the Jehovah's Witnesses. City staff said at Thursday night's meeting that it would have to check the files to be sure, but at least some of those signs may have been put up without permits.
But the planning commission is in the business of only considering permit requests and not responsible for enforcement. In fact, nobody appears to be responsible for enforcement, staff said.
"It may be that you were penalized because you took the time to come and ask permission when others did not," Planning Commission Chair Nicole Dell told applicants Nathan Feasel and Hector Anguiano.
Staff said the variance is unnecessary because the church has shown on another sign facing a different street that, in fact, it can fit its name twice on the 6-foot sign. Church members noted, however, that that sign doesn't contain the church's full, official name.
In April, the church appeared before the planning commission to ask for a permit to put up a 28-square-foot sign. Commissioners rejected that request but spent about an hour trying to find a way to legally grant a permit allowing the church to put up a 12-square-foot sign.
They eventually decided they couldn't do so, because the request was for 28 feet and the city code didn't allow them to change the requested size. They suggested the church try again with a second request, for the 12-foot sign. There is a $350 fee for filing variance requests.
Church representatives said they believed the commission had clearly given them the impression that such a request would be granted, and had relied on that in filing the second request.
Dell responded that the commissioners were willing to approve the sign, but "we have found that we have less authority to do so than we had hoped."
Staff members and commissioners said they were offended by suggestions that they weren't willing to be fair to Spanish-speakers. City Planning Director Doug Montgomery, in a rare outburst, said he took "extreme offense at any suggestion that this department is in any way racist or bigoted," and that the church was being held to the same standards as every other applicant.
Commissioner Frank Butler said he thought the commission had given the church the impression that it would approve the request for the 12-foot sign but several other commissioners took umbrage at the suggestion they had broken an implied promise.
Commissioner Wayne Stocks said that although the commissioners may have done so, "we also made clear to them that they had to meet the criteria. They came back with a new sign but they did not meet any of the criteria, so I don't think we misled them in any way."
Commissioners also discussed asking the council directly to amend the code so that tradeoffs such as the one the church proposed would be legal but did not commit to doing so.
In other business, the commission unanimously approved a subdivision plan for a 14-acre parcel off Hill Road. Developer Alan Ruden wants to put in a 64-lot subdivision. Voters annexed the parcel to the city in May.
It was Ruden's second attempt. In December 2001, the city council denied a request to send to voters a request to annex a 24.7-acre parcel that included the current piece of land.
Ruden also is seeking a zone change for the property, from exclusive farmland to residential. The commission unanimously voted to send an approval recommendation to the city council, which has authority over zoning changes.