Is Issue Bingo or Racism in the Feud Over Samoan Church?

It was to have been a new beginning for Aliipule Aliipule and the Samoan Congregational Christian Church of Tri-City. For three long years, the deacon and his congregation had worshiped in rented quarters. Finally, late in 1984, the church mustered the financial wherewithal to build a permanent home.

Their plan seemed simple enough. After scouting the area, the congregation decided that a five-acre parcel in a quiet neighborhood on the western edge of Vista was just the spot for their chapel. Buoyed by visions of the future, church members set out in quest of a city permit for the project.

That’s when the trouble began. Residents of homes surrounding the site were alarmed by the prospect of a church being erected in their corner of town. The Samoans, they feared, would hold big-time bingo games, drawing an annoying stream of traffic that would shatter the neighborhood’s serene ambiance.

Last summer, the homeowners stormed City Hall, persuading the council to block construction of the church. But Aliipule and his flock refused to concede. In the months since, the dispute has mushroomed into a major legal conflict, with a decision on the fate of the church now resting with the 4th District Court of Appeal.

As the battle slogs on, an ugly undercurrent has emerged. While neighbors insist their opposition to the church relates strictly to traffic and other public safety concerns, the Samoans feel otherwise, bitterly suggesting the episode has been tinged with racism.

“They just don’t want a minority church in there,” said Aliipule (pronounced ali-poley), a solidly built man who recently retired after 22 years in the U.S. Marines. “They’re just using bingo and traffic as an excuse. If it was another church, Catholic or Baptist, they wouldn’t put up a fight.”

But homeowners in the neighborhood, a checkerboard of single-story houses on half-acre lots straddling the northern reaches of Emerald Drive, maintain their motives are not shaded by bigotry.

“I don’t think you should plunk a church right down in the middle of an established neighborhood,” said Lillian Murray, a resident opposed to the congregation’s plans. “The inference of bigotry is just an excuse. It’s something strictly in their own heads. If they wanted to buy that land and build single-family homes there, I would have no objection to it.”

Ray Knowles, a neighbor whose three-bedroom, brick-and-stucco house borders the church site, is more blunt about his concerns, suggesting that noise and crowds from the congregation would ruin his family’s peaceful life style.

“Knowing a little background on these types of people, I know that when they get together they get to be a little bit rowdy, excessively noisy, compared to a normal church-type program,” Knowles said. “That’s not what I bought my house for. I have a feeling it would have a tendency to downgrade my property’s value.”

Aliipule said such concerns are unfounded. Although some Samoan congregations pray with the fervor of a chanting Southern Baptist, the Tri-City flock is much more sedate, he said. “It’s no screaming or any banging of drums or anything like that,” Aliipule noted, adding that his church forbids the use of alcohol, tobacco or drugs.

Moreover, the deacon said, Knowles’ words are a tangible sign of the resentment shared by residents opposed to the church.

“It’s a bunch of racism,” Aliipule said. “We didn’t expect it. The neighbors have come out in force. They spread a lot of different rumors about what we’re going to do.”

Chief among the nuggets of neighborhood gossip has been speculation about bingo.

While the church’s application with Vista for a conditional use permit said nothing about bingo, neighbors became concerned last summer when they learned the congregation was sponsoring games at the facility it was renting in Oceanside.

Worried that the Samoans might offer bingo in the 5,000-square-foot fellowship hall planned as part of the Vista project, a handful of Emerald Drive homeowners started circulating flyers urging residents to organize to fight the “bingo casino” planned in their midst. The leaflets also questioned why a church that has “less than 100 members” would need a parking lot with 375 spaces.

But according to Aliipule, the church has nearly 200 members. The congregation’s original plans called for fewer than 100 parking spaces but the city required the church to provide 375 based on the facility’s square footage.

The $1-million project, which includes the fellowship hall, a pastor’s residence and the chapel, sailed through the city Planning Commission in June, 1985, but a resident appealed the matter to the City Council. Homeowners flooded the council chambers for the July, 1985, hearing bearing petitions with the signatures of about 300 residents opposed to the Samoan church.

Bingo was the prime topic. Aliipule assured the council that the congregation was merely asking to build a church, not sponsor bingo games. Councilman Lloyd von Haden, however, noted the church’s bingo operation in Oceanside, suggesting that Aliipule and the rest were being less than candid.

Aliipule explained that the Oceanside bingo games were being held to make money to build the church. The congregation never had any intention of shifting the games to Vista when their facility was built, he said.

During a recent interview, Aliipule reiterated that stance, adding that the congregation plans after it has moved into the Vista church to continue to rent the Oceanside hall and run bingo games there so the construction debt can be paid off.

“We have no intentions and no planning whatsoever for bingo,” he said. “All we want is a facility for us to conduct our business as a church and a place for our youth groups. That’s all we ask.”

Despite support for the project from the city’s planning staff, which said the chapel could fit harmoniously in the neighborhood if properly shielded from adjacent houses with landscaping, the City Council voted unanimously to deny the church a permit to build.

Aliipule and the rest mulled the setback, eventually deciding to file a lawsuit against the city. “We felt it was something we needed to fight,” the deacon said. “The city felt it could push us around. It came to a point where we had to stand up for our rights.”

In November, Superior Court Judge Lawrence Kapiloff ordered a rehearing, ruling that the council should not have considered bingo in refusing the permit. But when the council held a second hearing in February, it denied the permit again, this time based on objections from the neighbors and the church’s effect on traffic along Emerald Drive.

Once again, the church went to court, arguing at an April hearing that the council had blown the traffic problem out of proportion. According to vehicle counts done by the city, traffic along Emerald Drive was 67% of capacity. Mike Jimmink, a Carlsbad attorney representing the church, also pointed to a report from the city planning staff saying a church would send fewer cars onto the street each day than would the 17 homes that could be built on the site under existing zoning laws.

Kapiloff again sided with the church, calling the city’s handling of the matter “a sham from beginning to end” and saying the City Council had “exhibited gross bigotry in attempting to deny a minority their right to practice their religion by the thinnest subterfuge.” Kapiloff said the council members “ought to be ashamed of themselves for behaving in such an un-American manner” and ordered them to issue the permit to the church.

That didn’t sit too well with several council members, in particular Gloria McClellan. The veteran Vista councilwoman said she resented the judge’s statements about the council, noting that she had raised several children while her husband, a former Marine, was at war “protecting our country.” Moreover, she maintained, Kapiloff had overstepped his legal bounds and could, at most, only order the council to rehear the matter.

Von Haden agreed. “Judge Kapiloff had absolutely no evidence at all that we are bigots,” the councilman said, noting that in recent years the council has opposed three other churches planned in residential neighborhoods. “We feel it’s wrong that a judge should substitute his opinion for ours. The permit was not turned down because they were Samoans. It was turned down because there would be a lot of traffic there from people playing bingo.”

Pressed by the two members, the council agreed July 8 to appeal Kapiloff’s ruling. Thomas Ruhrup, deputy city attorney, said the city will seek yet another rehearing of the matter, arguing that Kapiloff exceeded his authority by ordering the council to issue a permit to the Samoans. Under California law, Ruhrup said, the judge is permitted merely to require the council to reconsider the issue and offer “judicial guidance as to what should be considered credible evidence.”

The appeal is expected to wind on for at least another year. In the meantime, relations between the neighbors and the church have remained frosty. Despite assurances from the Samoans, many residents still insist the congregation will sponsor bingo if the church is built.

“Of course they’ll have bingo here, although they say they won’t,” said Patsy Filo, a resident who has been a key organizer of the effort to block the project. “A church just does not belong here. It isn’t because it’s Samoans. I would work against this even if it was a Catholic church.”

Other residents, among them Knowles, question why the church has been unwilling to look elsewhere.

“The thing I don’t understand is, when they have other Samoan churches around here, why they keep insisting on this particular parcel,” Knowles said. “These people seem to be very dogmatic. Maybe they’re trying to prove something.”

Aliipule admitted the congregation could go elsewhere but believes something greater is at stake. “It’s a matter of principle,” said the deacon, who has handled the church’s administrative matters since it broke away from another Samoan church in 1981. “If we pick up our stuff and leave, we’ll be followed by this thing.”

Even though the congregation has remained resolute, members have been saddened by the reception they have been given, he said.

The congregation consists mostly of low- or moderate-income families who fled their homeland after the U.S. Navy abandoned its base on the chain of South Pacific islands in 1952, inflicting a paralyzing blow to the local economy.

As the children have come, Aliipule said, many have veered away from the tradition of the islands, namely a strong sense of family and firm devotion to Christianity. The congregation wants to build the Vista facility so the teen-agers, who have violated church rules by spending Sundays playing football or going to the beach, can become more involved in youth activities at the church.

“We’re trying to teach them the Christian life like we were brought up to on the islands,” Aliipule said. “Sunday is the day of the Lord. We’d like to stretch that to our kids. A church would help.”