By Anne Scheck
COMMISSIONER QUESTIONS DOWNTOWN CHURCH COMPLIANCE, ‘EYES’ NOW ON IT
The Independence Planning Commission was asked Monday night by City Planner Fred Evander to keep their “eyes” on two downtown churches that are required to also operate a business on their premises, after the topic was brought forward at the meeting.
The new item was added to the commission agenda at the request of Commissioner Kate Schwarzler – a question about whether two downtown churches are complying with their conditional use permits.
Though the meeting had been announced only as a land-use training session for the commissioners, Evander stated that Schwarzler had sent him an email suggesting that this issue be addressed. “So, Kate, do you want to bring it up?” he asked.
Schwarzler said she wanted to know if the combined business-church building on C Street was making progress on meeting the conditions of the permit, following conditional-use permit approval several weeks ago. Also, she said she wished to inquire “in a similar vein, with The Grove and their coffee shop,” adding that she’d been told of “frustrations that it seems like they weren’t open.”
Evander said he had been monitoring both. In the case of The Grove, the coffee shop is largely volunteers, and sometimes it has been open and sometimes it hasn’t, he said. “If you folks want to keep an eye on it, that would be good, too,” he said.
Under terms of the permit, the coffee shop at The Grove is supposed to be in service five hours for five days a week. “Let’s see if they’re meeting it or not, so if folks want to keep their eyes out, that is a good start,” he said.
“We’ll keep our eyes open on it,” agreed Planning Commission Chair Corby Chappell. However, he pointed out that the pandemic may have had an effect on the hours of operation.
Previously, Schwarzler had raised concerns about parking on Sunday mornings for the church on C Street, Christ The King Christian Church, which has attendees capped at 49.
Asked after the meeting if she felt she needed to identify herself as a nearby business owner – conflict-of-interest issues were covered in the training session – Schwarzler said no, citing the fact that the discussion was not part of a scheduled hearing. Schwarzler’s business, Indy Commons, is housed in a building close in proximity to The Grove.
[NOTE: An editorial on this meeting appears at the end of this Linking Letter by the editor-publisher of Trammart News & Publishing]
INFO & UPDATES
~CITY MANAGER TO DEPART City Manager Tom Pessemier is leaving his post at the city after three years. Read about it in the Polk County Itemizer Observer at the link below. Please note: The article on the city manager’s departure was submitted as an analysis’ Also Fire Chief Ben Stange, who is quoted in it, should have had his last name spelled that way. https://www.polkio.com/news/pessemier-seeks-change-not-new-job/article_5a21640c-3cfd-11ec-913e-7f45f60f05ac.html
~DAY CARE SHUT DOWN Also in the Itemizer-Observer, the story of the shutdown of an Independence day care center. Public documents on the closure can be accessed at: https://oregonearlylearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Scan_EOS_CribMidgetDayCare_GilNaomi.pdf
Independence City Council Meeting, this coming Tuesday, 6:30 pm, Civic Center. Agenda item: Independence Police Chief Robert Mason is expected to be named interim city manager.
-Sips 'n' Science: Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 6:30 - 8 pm. Science-focused talk by Jennifer Beathe, forester and outreach manager at Starker Forests. An overview of Starker Forests, with an explanation of the research there. Details and registration for this FREE event are at https://www.luckiamutelwc.org/sips-n-science-starker-forests.html
Editorial Commentary
by Anne Scheck
Editor-publisher, Trammart News & Publishing
My deeply held view is that editorials should be a rarity when news coverage is done by the same person writing them. However, I consider Monday night’s meeting of the Planning Commission just such an exception. I would also welcome a guest editorial on this matter.
To twist a great phrase from America’s revolutionary war patriot, Thomas Paine, this is a time that tries my soul – if I actually have one. As a longtime Unitarian Universalist, I am perhaps the least equipped defender of religion to express support for our downtown churches. But I am doing so anyway, on principle.
I don’t have much familiarity with either church, actually. I’ve bought a great cup of coffee in one, The Grove on Main Street, and cheerily conversed in the other with the building’s new proprietor, a man in move-in mode at the C Street location when I caught up with him.
Human connections seem so well-served by churches, and we seem to have needed them so much during the coronavirus crisis. Gone were the after-service gatherings for cookies and conversation, the in-person worship times with their meet-and-greets – those traditions that seem to bind so many, warding off loneliness and fostering a sense of belonging. It seemed to me that local churches tried hard to continue that outreach, under very difficult circumstances.
This is why my time as the publisher of the world’s smallest newspaper, The Independent, reached its nadir this past Monday night. At the meeting of the Independence Planning Commission, which was announced only as a training session, these two downtown churches were singled out for an effort to put the “eyes” of commissioners on them, in a quest to confirm that both are living up to their conditional use permits.
This agenda item, if you can call it that, was not on the agenda. It was placed there by the city planner, seemingly at the last minute, after more than an hour in which the city attorney had instructed the commission on land-use decision-making – a training session that was the only named task listed on the agenda.
Immediately after the city attorney’s exit, City Planner Fred Evander said he’d received an email from a commissioner about adding an item, then turned the floor over to her.
I was stunned by what transpired next: a recounting by this commissioner of alleged “frustrations” over alleged closures during posted hours of coffee-shop operation at one church, The Grove. And an inquiry about whether the newcomer, Christ The King Christian Church, was making progress toward meeting the terms of its conditional use permit.
Keep an eye on these two sites, Evander urged the commissioners.
I felt myself wishing for somebody to say something about the turn this meeting was taking.
No one did.
So, I did. After the meeting. To City Planner Evander, in a most fervent way.
It turns out I am wrong, I am told. Discussions like this can be placed on the agenda just like they were, upon request, at the meeting.
So, let me correct myself right here and now. I was mistaken to think an item like this should have been given public notice. Or that the majority of our planning commissioners – who strike me as excellently attuned to their roles, particularly chair Corby Chappell, who has helmed this board for years – were put in an awkward position by a request to be a gaggle of “eyes” to help ensure compliance.
Allow me to apologize.
Yes, these two churches are under an obligation to meet their other public-facing services, like coffee sales. Yes, they should live up to such requirements.
However, we’re just coming out of a pandemic and sudden closures at retail stores along Main Street have occurred with regularity, even without mandated shutdowns, as merchants struggled to stay open – and now are currently suffering a labor shortage.
I suppose I was responding to all those recent months of covid, during which our US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy MD, called upon us to build a more connected future – a future he cited as “an urgent mission that we can and must tackle together.”
I learned a lot this past Monday night at the Independence Planning Commission and, sadly to me, not all of those lessons came from the presentation by the city attorney.
REMINDER: The Ella Curran Food Bank wants to make sure everyone has a great Thanksgiving. Do you need turkey or chicken and fixings for Thanksgiving dinner? Sign up through the Ella Curran Food Bank for a box of those items. Call: 503 838 6687.
COMMISSIONER QUESTIONS DOWNTOWN CHURCH COMPLIANCE, ‘EYES’ NOW ON IT
The Independence Planning Commission was asked Monday night by City Planner Fred Evander to keep their “eyes” on two downtown churches that are required to also operate a business on their premises, after the topic was brought forward at the meeting.
The new item was added to the commission agenda at the request of Commissioner Kate Schwarzler – a question about whether two downtown churches are complying with their conditional use permits.
Though the meeting had been announced only as a land-use training session for the commissioners, Evander stated that Schwarzler had sent him an email suggesting that this issue be addressed. “So, Kate, do you want to bring it up?” he asked.
Schwarzler said she wanted to know if the combined business-church building on C Street was making progress on meeting the conditions of the permit, following conditional-use permit approval several weeks ago. Also, she said she wished to inquire “in a similar vein, with The Grove and their coffee shop,” adding that she’d been told of “frustrations that it seems like they weren’t open.”
Evander said he had been monitoring both. In the case of The Grove, the coffee shop is largely volunteers, and sometimes it has been open and sometimes it hasn’t, he said. “If you folks want to keep an eye on it, that would be good, too,” he said.
Under terms of the permit, the coffee shop at The Grove is supposed to be in service five hours for five days a week. “Let’s see if they’re meeting it or not, so if folks want to keep their eyes out, that is a good start,” he said.
“We’ll keep our eyes open on it,” agreed Planning Commission Chair Corby Chappell. However, he pointed out that the pandemic may have had an effect on the hours of operation.
Previously, Schwarzler had raised concerns about parking on Sunday mornings for the church on C Street, Christ The King Christian Church, which has attendees capped at 49.
Asked after the meeting if she felt she needed to identify herself as a nearby business owner – conflict-of-interest issues were covered in the training session – Schwarzler said no, citing the fact that the discussion was not part of a scheduled hearing. Schwarzler’s business, Indy Commons, is housed in a building close in proximity to The Grove.
[NOTE: An editorial on this meeting appears at the end of this Linking Letter by the editor-publisher of Trammart News & Publishing]
INFO & UPDATES
~CITY MANAGER TO DEPART City Manager Tom Pessemier is leaving his post at the city after three years. Read about it in the Polk County Itemizer Observer at the link below. Please note: The article on the city manager’s departure was submitted as an analysis’ Also Fire Chief Ben Stange, who is quoted in it, should have had his last name spelled that way. https://www.polkio.com/news/pessemier-seeks-change-not-new-job/article_5a21640c-3cfd-11ec-913e-7f45f60f05ac.html
~DAY CARE SHUT DOWN Also in the Itemizer-Observer, the story of the shutdown of an Independence day care center. Public documents on the closure can be accessed at: https://oregonearlylearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Scan_EOS_CribMidgetDayCare_GilNaomi.pdf
Independence City Council Meeting, this coming Tuesday, 6:30 pm, Civic Center. Agenda item: Independence Police Chief Robert Mason is expected to be named interim city manager.
-Sips 'n' Science: Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 6:30 - 8 pm. Science-focused talk by Jennifer Beathe, forester and outreach manager at Starker Forests. An overview of Starker Forests, with an explanation of the research there. Details and registration for this FREE event are at https://www.luckiamutelwc.org/sips-n-science-starker-forests.html
Editorial Commentary
by Anne Scheck
Editor-publisher, Trammart News & Publishing
My deeply held view is that editorials should be a rarity when news coverage is done by the same person writing them. However, I consider Monday night’s meeting of the Planning Commission just such an exception. I would also welcome a guest editorial on this matter.
To twist a great phrase from America’s revolutionary war patriot, Thomas Paine, this is a time that tries my soul – if I actually have one. As a longtime Unitarian Universalist, I am perhaps the least equipped defender of religion to express support for our downtown churches. But I am doing so anyway, on principle.
I don’t have much familiarity with either church, actually. I’ve bought a great cup of coffee in one, The Grove on Main Street, and cheerily conversed in the other with the building’s new proprietor, a man in move-in mode at the C Street location when I caught up with him.
Human connections seem so well-served by churches, and we seem to have needed them so much during the coronavirus crisis. Gone were the after-service gatherings for cookies and conversation, the in-person worship times with their meet-and-greets – those traditions that seem to bind so many, warding off loneliness and fostering a sense of belonging. It seemed to me that local churches tried hard to continue that outreach, under very difficult circumstances.
This is why my time as the publisher of the world’s smallest newspaper, The Independent, reached its nadir this past Monday night. At the meeting of the Independence Planning Commission, which was announced only as a training session, these two downtown churches were singled out for an effort to put the “eyes” of commissioners on them, in a quest to confirm that both are living up to their conditional use permits.
This agenda item, if you can call it that, was not on the agenda. It was placed there by the city planner, seemingly at the last minute, after more than an hour in which the city attorney had instructed the commission on land-use decision-making – a training session that was the only named task listed on the agenda.
Immediately after the city attorney’s exit, City Planner Fred Evander said he’d received an email from a commissioner about adding an item, then turned the floor over to her.
I was stunned by what transpired next: a recounting by this commissioner of alleged “frustrations” over alleged closures during posted hours of coffee-shop operation at one church, The Grove. And an inquiry about whether the newcomer, Christ The King Christian Church, was making progress toward meeting the terms of its conditional use permit.
Keep an eye on these two sites, Evander urged the commissioners.
I felt myself wishing for somebody to say something about the turn this meeting was taking.
No one did.
So, I did. After the meeting. To City Planner Evander, in a most fervent way.
It turns out I am wrong, I am told. Discussions like this can be placed on the agenda just like they were, upon request, at the meeting.
So, let me correct myself right here and now. I was mistaken to think an item like this should have been given public notice. Or that the majority of our planning commissioners – who strike me as excellently attuned to their roles, particularly chair Corby Chappell, who has helmed this board for years – were put in an awkward position by a request to be a gaggle of “eyes” to help ensure compliance.
Allow me to apologize.
Yes, these two churches are under an obligation to meet their other public-facing services, like coffee sales. Yes, they should live up to such requirements.
However, we’re just coming out of a pandemic and sudden closures at retail stores along Main Street have occurred with regularity, even without mandated shutdowns, as merchants struggled to stay open – and now are currently suffering a labor shortage.
I suppose I was responding to all those recent months of covid, during which our US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy MD, called upon us to build a more connected future – a future he cited as “an urgent mission that we can and must tackle together.”
I learned a lot this past Monday night at the Independence Planning Commission and, sadly to me, not all of those lessons came from the presentation by the city attorney.
REMINDER: The Ella Curran Food Bank wants to make sure everyone has a great Thanksgiving. Do you need turkey or chicken and fixings for Thanksgiving dinner? Sign up through the Ella Curran Food Bank for a box of those items. Call: 503 838 6687.
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