MAC Impasse on Permit for Church on Lil’ Grocer Site October 24, 2007
Posted by castrovalley in Local News.trackback
A proposal to put a church at the 1.17-acre Lil’ Grocers’ lot on Lake Chabot Road prompted a rare tie vote at Monday night’s MAC meeting.With no recommendation from the county on whether to approve or deny the church project, and the Castro Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Board failure to endorse it, the council ended up with a 3-3 impasse.…..Read more …
What a cop-out by the MAC members. The county doesn’t want to loose the tax revenue, and bigots would rather sit on the property the way it is than let a Christian group build a church. There are plenty of traffic signals accessing property. Citing traffic conecerns is a farce. There didn’t seem to be any traffic concerns when the Community Center was built. As was stated by the applicants, if it was a viable commercial site, someone would have acted upon it by now. I would like to see them turn it down if it was going to be a Mosk.
I am not sure bigotry is in play here. But, I can see an argument for the loss of tax revenues. Though, it is not one I would make personally. Don’t church’s pay taxes too?
Does anyone know if the MAC has presented information on exactly what it is they are looking for in that space? It has been vacant for such a long time and is a real blight on our beautiful little town. It would be good too know what would “be acceptable”. So we, as a community, could search for solutions that would work.
Personally, I am not religious and yet another church in our little town is not too exciting to me. A Mosque might be a little more interesting for diversity sake. Or maybe a Shinto temple. But, I would be happy with either if it meant that space would be made less of a blight.