Under Specter of Lawsuit, Panel Backs Church’s Building Plan

The tension filling the hearing room seemed out of place with the calm, factual presentations of the spokesmen for a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation and for the residents of an unincorporated pocket of land near Escondido.

The issue before the county’s Planning and Environmental Review Board was clear: Would the construction of a 500-seat kingdom hall by the religious group severely affect the rural residential neighborhood wedged between the southeast outskirts of Escondido and the northern city limits of San Diego.

The residents said it would; the Jehovah’s Witnesses said it wouldn’t.

Planning board members voted 2 to 1 to grant the church a permit to build its assembly hall after only a few neighbors rose to testify about the traffic hazards around Bear Valley Parkway and Encino Drive intersection near their homes and the congestion on the narrow two-lane streets. They told of the existing parking and traffic congestion on their streets because of another church, Emmanuel Faith Community, about their concerns that their quiet neighborhood would become as noisy and crowded as a shopping center to the south.

A large and vociferous contingent of opponents had turned out for an earlier round of hearings last year, in which the project was rejected unanimously by the same planning panel, the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.

“It was the lawsuit that did it,” one resident said about the lessened objections of the neighborhood. “Folks in the neighborhood were scared that, if they got up and gave their names, they’d be named in the lawsuit,” as one of the 500 unnamed defendants in a $10-million civil suit the church filed against residents, leaders of a nearby church and the county. “I guess they figured we would back down because we didn’t have the money to fight a lawsuit. And, I guess that they were right.”

One neighbor said that, right or wrong, the residents who had rallied against the church backed off after the lawsuit was filed last fall. It was difficult to find anyone who would step forward and sign the appeal papers that would send the issue to the Planning Commission next month. And it was difficult to find anyone other than Jim Bohorquez who was willing to speak on the record to a reporter about the dispute.

Earlier this week, Bohorquez--a relative newcomer to the group--volunteered to file the appeal, assuring one more hearing on the project before construction can begin. Bohorquez joined the residents’ protest with fervor about a month ago after being “honked at, forced off the road and nearly run over” by fast-moving cars while testing his daughter’s bike on neighborhood roads.

He said he is not intimidated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ lawsuit, but acknowledged that he did increase his homeowners’ insurance to $1 million, just in case.

The lawsuit alleges that opponents of the kingdom hall are breaching the Park Hill congregation’s constitutional rights to religious freedom, assembly, speech and association, and seeks, among other things, $10 million in punitive damages against leaders of a nearby church, neighborhood residents and the county.

The lawsuit has been put on hold--dismissed permanently against officers and members of nearby Emmanuel Faith Community Church, but dismissed without prejudice against area residents and a Sierra Club spokeswoman. The suit against the latter defendants can be refiled on the same issues at any time, according to Byron Cornelius, the attorney for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The suit against the county supervisors is on appeal to the 4th District Court of Appeal in an effort to overturn the board’s earlier denial of the project, Cornelius said.

Cornelius stressed that the suit against the opposing neighbors “is not meant as an act of intimidation” but as an effort “to have the matter settled on the issue of zoning. . . . We have the zoning, and we have met the requirements.

“We, the Park Hill congregation and I, weren’t trying to threaten the neighbors. We are not out to get their billfolds. We have been trying to build our church for the last 18 months, and we just want to get on with it.”

Ted Marioncelli, an aide to Supervisor John MacDonald, shrugged off the threat of the lawsuit against the county.

“If they want to sue us, they take a number and get in line,” he quipped.

He understands, however, how the homeowners could be intimidated by the threat of a lawsuit.

Because of their religious beliefs, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not register to vote. Marioncelli said they use the courts to accomplish their objectives.

“They filed suit against the homeowners and the opposition evaporated. They accomplished what they set out to do,” Marioncelli said.

MacDonald received a letter from the church group’s attorney last year, threatening a lawsuit unless the county board granted the permit for the church building or allowed the group to re-apply immediately for the permit, but “we tend to ignore that kind of thing in this business,” Marioncelli said.

The supervisor recommended the earlier denial of the permit. The county board voted unanimously to deny it. The lawsuit was filed.

Bohorquez said that members of the neighborhood opposition group had told him of receiving telephone calls asking if they were members of Emmanuel Faith church during last year’s stormy hearings on the church permit. When some recipients of the calls phoned the community church to ask if a membership survey was in progress, church officials said no such activity was in progress.

“These people are genuinely frightened,” Bohorquez said. “I even had trouble getting other people to help in handing out handbills in the neighborhood,” advertising the April 6 planning board hearing.

Escondido Councilman Jerry Harmon said the city is “vitally interested” in the church project on its southern boundary “because we are about to spend $3 million to $4 million to rectify traffic problems on Bear Valley Parkway to the north that appear to be similar to the problems at the church site.”

Eventually, the area will be brought into the city of Escondido, “and we don’t want to have to make the same expensive corrections at the expense of the city’s taxpayers,” he said. “New development must pay its own way.”

Harmon said the city would not appeal the planning board decision because county officials had assured Escondido Public Works Director Dennis Wilson that the county is requiring the Jehovah’s Witnesses group to meet all city building and zoning standards and to mitigate any traffic problems the church construction may cause.