EK, I was suspecting that it was the case of some school Board members being involved with the church.
Going from a purely business standpoint. Is there another group that was shoved aside in favor of renting the facility to the church? If so, did the church get a more favorable rate? If not, and the NPV is still positive, it does not change my opinion.
I am with Hunt and others. Bringing up an issue of religion and discrimination will only ruffle feathers and make people defensive; your very valid concern about parking might drown in the heated debates about religion, fair use, etc.
EK, you’re conflating several issues, as others have pointed out. The building without parking has nothing to do with your parking issues with the pool. As you well know, the current trend, and not just in Seattle, is to allow more “dense” housing with fewer parking spots to encourage use of public transportation, which is also being expanded.
The school renting out space to a church-ANY church, is within the guidelines set by the district and the city. It doesn’t matter that they are not following YOUR beliefs, nor the mayors, as long as the RENTAL guidelines are being followed.
The real issue about parking is that pool parking is being used by others not using the pool. This seems to particularly irk your group, but it has nothing to do with the church’s stand on moral matters, the mayor being gay or the trend to reduce parking. The pool managers are the ones you should work with since they are there during both school and church times-THEY should be working with school and church administrations to solve the problem.
Conversely, the church I work for rents out our space to other groups, and WE, as administrators of the building are the ones who deal with them when parking or other usage issues crop up, not the quilting class or the Bible study groups. If you want a separate thread to rant about churches renting public property, or to complain about the mayer or the school district, go for it.
“…to encourage use of public transportation, which is also being expanded.”
Sorry, SSeamom, I disagree with the last portion of that statement. Bus routes have been cut, and a few measly rail lines that are planned are not going to solve the urban transportation issues (know the issues firsthand because I refuse to drive in the city and use buses all the time(.
This whole post is going in circles. If there is a parking issue caused by the rental to a large group, then that’s the issue, regardless of who that large group is.
I don’t know if our local schools rented to religious groups, but when our synagogue was undergoing renovation and they couldn’t hold Hebrew school there, both a local (public) middle school and a local (private / Catholic ) high school stepped forward and offered the use of their facilities. I assume there was some compensation, but I don’t know how much.
EK, you’re irked (understandably) by not having the parking issue – but it seems that you’re doubly irked precisely because the people who are taking the spots are members of a church you don’t particularly like (or which espouses values you don’t like) - which is fine, but completely and utterly irrelevant.
BB, sorry, was not clear that I was not explaining MY reasoning, but that of local governments. While some bus routes are being cut wrongly IMO, others are cut with the idea that riders will move over to the trolly or light rail, etc. H works downtown and does work somewhat related to the transportation issues. It seems some people like this density (see The Stranger) but it inconveniences a lot of us.
I know the church you speak of. They graciously allow my non-affiliated, very secular running group to use their facility on a Saturday morning at no charge. They also paid for a parking lot rehab at the ES across the street from their main church. They are really nice people.
One of the SB members uses their meeting rooms for monthly meetings. I have no idea if she is a church member or not, although I do know she works at the same company I do.
As an aside, we have gay members as well as several church members and no one has been anything but respectful to all of us.
If you call or send a letter to them I’m sure they will work with you.
The SD rents to everyone at the same rate. It isn’t cheap. If it’s subsidized, it’s subsidized for all renters.
My S’s high school also has a public pool attached. I don’t think this high school rents to a church on Sundays. I do know that there have been days when my S has come home and told me he witnessed 4+ cars being towed from the pool lot, presumably the cars belonged to students who parked in the wrong lot. Is there any way your pool administrators can have some sort of authority like that? (I do think that having signs up saying those parking spots are for pool users only and others are subject to towing would be a good first step.)
“But now since Easter, a local church has been using the whole lot every Sunday, plus surrounding streets.
Services begin 30 minutes before the pool opens, and while I’m sure they have mentioned to parishioners not to park in the pool spaces, that clearly is not enough.”
Has no one in the Pacific Northwest ever heard of signs? Problem solved.
Unfortunately, signs don’t always work. I have a group I go to every Thursday evening that’s held at a church. The church has a large parking lot on the backside of the building. The parking row closest to the building has about a dozen spots (two are handicapped), and belongs to the church. The rest of the parking lot belongs to the village. I’ve never had a problem parking in this lot until about a year ago. A very popular eating establishment relocated very near the church, and now the civic parking lot fills up every night, and then some. I suspect many of these restaurant goers are parking in the front row of the church - and yes, there is a sign that says the front row is reserved for visitors to this church until 10PM on weeknights. But the part of the civic parking lot fills up, and I suspect restaurant goers are using that front row because when I show up, I either have to drive in circles waiting for someone to pull out, or go a block away and park in another church’s parking lot (who actually has a sign up that says it’s only for people using their church). It’s not fun in the winter time, and when we have new people come to our gatherings, we don’t exactly know what to tell them in regards to parking. This restaurant’s business has taken over all the parking abutting the church, including street.
We’ve actually discussed moving the location of our meetings, which would be a pain, but people not paying attention to parking signs has made it difficult for newcomers to our group to figure out where to park and how to access the building.
And yea, we could call the police and ask them to stake out the parking lot every Thursday night, but I really don’t think the village police are going to want to use a resource person to stake out a dozen parking spots every night at a church (I’m saying every night, because I’ve heard from others who use this church for other groups that they now have the same problem). Bad, bad planning on the village when they allowed this restaurant to move locations and not provide adequate parking for their customers.
@emeraldkity4 BTW…how do you know that this church is renting for below market? And what would the market price be?
Why is this church renting? Are they building or remodeling their own church? You say it"s a mega-church so that sounds like it’s an established church that is renting temporarily while their own church is finishing construction/remodel/whatever.
I’m not sure that the market price would be easily known. There isn’t typically a constant market for renting the school on a Sunday. I would guess that the “market price” is simply cost plus maybe some profit? I’m not sure that the school can really charge enough to make a “profit” since its land is tax free and maybe isn’t allowed to generate much of a profit like a private entity could.
Besides, there is usually a spirit of “community good will” intended when permitting these rentals.
Turning this around…a number of years ago, there was significant damage at a school where I worked. The first folks who stepped up to help were the local churches who offered their classrooms rent free to the schools until the reconstruction took place. The school’s paid the utility bills.
Some of these same churches rented space in the school for after school religious education classes (when the school wasn’t damaged).
I never saw this as a problem, and don’t now.
Re: the parking spaces…if handicapped spaces are needed, the pool folks should request the necessary signage for these. In my experience, in smaller lots, there is never enough handicapped parking…and some of it is quite a distance to walk.
Rentals of public facilities are public documents.
Again, if they weren’t using the pool spaces, I wouldn’t be as irritated.
The other factor is that the principal & immature was rude when addressing the concerns of the elderly patrons of the pool.
In this situation, the church uses five different buildings for services on Sunday, the main church has 5 services on Sunday, last one at 7pm, ( they dedicated a new building 5 yrs ago) I imagine at some point they may find a place outside of the city, but land inside the city is quite scarce. Example on the real estate thread, I just posted a link that an 1100 sq ft house in the same neighborhood sold for over $700,000.
The city actually just removed parking spaces from the pool, so as to bring the handicapped spaces into legal compliance. Although those spaces are now sloped sideways, so if you dropped something while getting out, it would roll to the other side of the parking lot!
Nice.
Construction work is also being done across the street, so big trucks are taking up spaces as well.
It isn’t that the church is causing all the difficulty, that is only Sundays. The other issue is the school using pool spaces, and the mayor allowing new housing that does not include parking.
Seattle has added over 7,000 housing units last year alone, while San Francisco only added 1,000.
We also do not have the public transportation infrastructure of SF.
If the swim lessons are actually offered by someone other than the public school, then would whoever is offering them have a contract clearing stating the available parking spaces dedicated to the swimmers?
Church groups renting schools should not be a problem, as long as the school rents facilities without favoring one group or any one religion. If a Wiccan group wanted to rent space and the school decided it wasn’t appropriate, but let let’s say an evangelical Christian church rent space, they would be violation of neutrality, or if they rent space out to a church at X dollars but charge other groups 2X, it would be favoritism.
In terms of non discrimination, that gets to be touchy. Churches can discriminate in their direct religious activities and non discrimination laws in that case can run afoul of the first amendment (it is why a lot of schools choose not to rent out their facilities at all, to avoid this). On the other hand, if the church let’s say runs a health screening program or an arts and crafts program for kids, non discrimination laws would apply (the BSA ran into this, quite a few school districts refuse to rent space to them, because of their discrimination against gays and atheists, and it is perfectly legal, since the BSA is not a church nor is it really a religious organization).
As far as the issue with the church and the parking spaces, that is a different issue. That kind of issue comes up all the time with churches, whether renting space or wanting to build a church, especially the mega churches, things like traffic and parking and noise often come up. If the church is causing problems with the pool, then the church and the school need to be made aware and ask them to come up with a solution. If cars are parking in handicapped spaces, then tow them and fine them. To be honest, unless the church is related to Westboro Baptist, I generally have found that if people have issues they are more than willing to find a solution and make clear to their people about where parking is legal and where it isn’t. they probably don’t want to cause anyone problems, either.
The Pool is not part of the high school, but part of the City parks & rec facilities.
Other neighborhoods have their pools associated with a community center, so the parking between the community center & nearby school is not as obscure.
Thats a good idea to put cones out, rather than dealing with the principal, I will just ask the church.
It would be nice to have at least one day a week when swimmers don’t have to walk blocks to the pool!
Well, when I used to do a water aerobics class, some of the people in there looked like they barely made it from the parking lot to the pool, so yea, I can see some participants needing those handicapped and close-up spots. I think being in the pool was the only safe activity they could participate in! They’d be coming in with walkers and canes, but get them in the water and they can bounce up and down all day long! Nice thing about buoyancy! It does attract a different kind of crowd, though.