City Council Approves Parking Lot
There’s a headline we’ve all been waiting to see! After 18 months of negotiations with the City – sometimes stalled for no reason anyone can figure out – the City Council last Tuesday approved the church’s continued use of the parking lot at Livingston Drive and The Toledo, albeit on a limited basis. We will have exclusive use of the lot from Noon Saturday through Noon Sunday. The rest of the week, the lot is City-controlled for community usage. As a condition of the new ten-year lease, with two five year renewal clauses, the church will tear-up and repave the lot, and do what landscaping we can within our budget. Last summer, the congregation approved up to $100,000 for this project. We have these funds set aside, a combination of discretionary and reserve funds. Nothing will come out of the church’s general budget for the parking lot.
The new lease becomes effective on Labor Day, September 1, after which we will begin to notify cars parked there they should be removed over the period of our weekend usage. The church will continue to examine designs and bids for repaving the lot.
A big vote of thanks goes to Doug Otto, church member and attorney, who gave dozens of hours of pro bono time and effort in the negotiations, stretching back to January 2007. Others who sat in on meetings and assisted where they could were Mike Jensen, Leslie Groene, Bill Lorbeer, Bill Hayter, and moderators Dede Gilmore and Dick Landes. We are grateful to all of these volunteers for their countless hours of meetings and assistance. We are also grateful to community members who, from the start of community meetings, were in favor of the church having continued use of the lot in its present location.
On another note, I was at the City Hall an hour early last Tuesday for the above Council meeting, so I went into the Downtown Library. It had many patrons inside, researching jobs on computers, doing school work, reading the wide variety of magazines, asking for assistance from research librarians, checking out books, videos and music. I join with Ray Bradbury and the letters to the editor I’ve read in the Press Telegram who decry a proposal to close the library. It serves an important and necessary role in a certain sector of our city, among people who might not otherwise have those resources readily available. It just goes to show you why we keep our church building in repair, so threat of closure is not an option.
Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister