School Opens Door to Church--and Tiff

When Christine Cornish, director of Fairbanks Country Day, opened the private school’s doors to a fledgling Episcopal church a few months ago, she thought she was doing a neighborly good deed.

But the action has troubled neighbors, who fear that the 30-member congregation will grow, leading to unwanted traffic and parking problems in the Rancho Santa Fe community. The controversy has brought the church, the school and the neighbors under the scrutiny of the county Planning Commission.

Church supporters and Country Day officials claim that their offer of good will should stand and cited examples of public schools playing host to a variety of non-school community activities. However, commissioners said public schools are allowed to sponsor such activities only because state law specifically exempts them from zoning restrictions.

But the discrepancy led commissioners on Friday to wrangle over the question of whether a private school can offer a congregation a temporary home.

C. Samuel Blick, an attorney for the congregation, argued that, because it is are not actually seeking to build a church on the school grounds but only using it as a temporary meeting place, the church does not require its own permit.

“There are only 20 to 30 members in the congregation, and they meet at the school on Sunday mornings with no chimes, no bells and no organs,” Blick said. “They are only using it as a temporary meeting place, not even as a church. Why then should they have to file for a permit.”

Gerald Hermanson, deputy director of regulatory planning for the commission, interpreted the restrictions of the land-use permit issued to the school as not allowing the facility to be used for church services. Hermanson said the congregation must apply for its own land-use permit if it wants to conduct services.

But Blick disagreed with the interpretation of permit restrictions by the commission staff. “It does not specifically state that church services cannot be held,” he said.

The commissioners’ vote was a 3-3 tie, denying the congregation’s appeal. But Commissioner Alan Ziegaus, noting the absence of member Clarence Wilson, successfully argued that the decision should be reconsidered when Wilson is present.

So the fate of the Episcopal church will be decided Sept. 2, when the full commission will take up the matter.

“When we offered the church our facilities, we never thought it was beyond our scope,” Cornish said. “We were only trying to establish a positive relationship between the school and the community.

“There really should be no concern,” she said. “We are a school, not a church. We have no intention of adding steeples to our building.”

Since the congregation is only planning to use the school grounds temporarily, Blick said, it would be “ridiculous” for the commission to force the church to go through the expensive and lengthy permit application process.

“It takes $3,000 and almost six months to obtain a permit,” Glick said. “By the time they receive it, it is likely the congregation will have left the school for a permanent site.”

The Rev. Robert Noble said his church could not afford the permit fee.

“Every infant congregation is extremely poor,” Noble said. “It’s impossible for us to pay that kind of money. All we’re trying to do is bring a Christian presence to the community.”

The commissioners said they realize the church’s intention is “sincere and noble,” but expressed concern that allowing the Church of the Epiphany to hold services at the school would set a precedent.

“If we allow this appeal to go through, in essence we are saying any private school can run a church function,” Ziegaus said. “The church may be small now, but what happens if it grows . . . 500, 1,500 members?”

Ziegaus said: “We can’t exempt cases. It leads to the abuse of the system.”