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Tuesday at the West End Neighborhood Council meeting we were blindside by the executive committee with a variance issue. We heard from one side, but the other side wasn’t told that there would be a vote. That one pushed me over the top in my tolerance for manipulative politics. More on that later.

After finding out about the public meeting regarding variances for a synagogue in a residential neighborhood on Mildred, I decided to attend and get the other side of the story.

It was like most such public meetings. One side was calm while the other was emotional. Each time the emotional group’s concerns were answered, the answer was ignored and the same thing was brought up again. The priceless moment of the meeting was when on of the more emotional neighbors stood up and proclaimed that his side was being rational and sticking to the issues and the other side was making emotional pleas. Made me wish I had it on video.

Some of the neighbors must not get out in public much. There was a group of four or so that were talking throughout the entire presentation and interrupted the meeting several times. But they weren’t emotional.

In the end it’s up to city hall to decide. What they’ll decide is anyone’s guess. But here’s my guess. The synagogue would be a nice addition to the neighborhood, in my opinion. It will likely be the most upscale structure within several blocks. It’s a nice brick-faced style front with wood siding on the others. But before the variances are approved there will be some changes to the plans. Architects understand this so they usually ask for a little more than they want, leaving a few extras on the table as bargaining chips.

The complaints from the neighbors were typical. Traffic, parking, size, view, safety. Most of those ended up being laughable complaints. Why? There’s an elementary school right across the street.

The traffic engineer, probably hired by the architect, said that statistics show an average of sixty vehicle trips (meaning two per car, so 30 cars) are generated by a synagogue of that size. But the elementary school has hundreds every day. One neighbor complained about the additional traffic that the synagogue would generate while explaining that he doesn’t mind when parents block his driveway when they drop off their kids. The additional traffic would be incremental and they acted like their neighborhood would be overrun with cars like never before. In my opinion, the point is almost moot.

Parking is an interesting one. Did I mention there’s an elementary school across the street? There’s also parking along the street. I doubt that members would block driveways, and if they did they should get towed. I live further North and sometimes get people parking in front of my house for parties at neighbors or for the really big events at Point Defiance Park. It’s part of living.

One of the interesting parking issues is that this is an orthodox Jewish synagogue. If you understand what that means the parking question becomes even less of an issue. They don’t drive on the sabbath. I’m sure not all of them are observant in that regard, but most are.

View and size are an issue, mostly for the abutting properties. However, the building will be 35 ft. tall. Most trees in the area grow to a height above that. So they’re going to lose their view anyway. I lost it from my living room. It’s disappearing from my office and getting smaller from my back yard. That’s life. It’s something you deal with not call public meetings about.

Those were the neighbors issues. The other side of the issue is pretty simple. Having a synagogue in the neighborhood is a good thing. It’s attended by good people who take good care of their meeting house, the same as most churches. But it almost sounded like these neighbors thought a crack dealer was moving in.

There was one other issue that was brought up. A real estate broker from Seattle spoke on behalf of the rabbi and the synagogue. His main point was that he often hears from Jewish clients that they want to live near a synagogue so they don’t have to walk so far on the Sabbath. It’s a very real phenomenon, but people will pay extra to live close to a church or synagogue that they are active in.

When I was in Bible College I knew many people who bought houses close to the church. So many did it that when neighbors would list their property and put an ad in the paper, they would include the words “close to…” and the name of the church. It was such an important selling point that they used expensive classified ad space in the Seattle Times to point it out.

The last thing I want to say is about bigotry, either religious or racial. I would like to be able to say that I saw no indication of it, but I can’t. I think most people there were simply concerned about their neighborhood. Some where there because they just got worked up by their neighbors.

Because of my beliefs I’ve faced religious bigotry many times. I know what it looks like and I know what the indicators are, those ‘yellow flags’ that warm me that there may be something deeper going on. I saw some of those yellow flags at the public meeting. Again, it was only a few people, but I’m pretty sure it was there. Not much can be done about it. It’s something that exists and those affected by it do the best they can in the face of it.

However, I have greater concerns about the neighborhood council meeting the night before. I’ll explain that in another post.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under BlogNetNews.com, FeedTacoma.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.