By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times
April 10, 2001
King County’s moratorium on permits for new churches and schools in rural areas could end as soon as April 23.
But some schools and churches, which don’t like the moratorium one bit, say the remedy the Metropolitan King County Council is offering them is worse.
The permanent limits the council is considering on churches and schools outside the county’s urban-growth boundary are “a little bit on the dictatorship side,” Clarence Paulson, a member of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church in Maple Valley, told the council yesterday.
The council spent a second straight Monday afternoon listening to public testimony on the 10-month moratorium it adopted in February after it couldn’t decide on County Executive Ron Sims’ proposal to impose size limits on churches and private schools in rural areas.
Sims said the limits were needed to keep rural areas from falling prey to sprawl. The issue has dominated and divided the council for months.
It’s back on the council’s agenda April 23. After yesterday’s hearing, Councilwoman Cynthia Sullivan, D-Seattle, who has offered a compromise, said she hopes to get her proposal passed then.
Rather than limiting the size of churches and schools, Sullivan would impose tougher environmental restrictions on larger facilities. Her plan would end the moratorium and also would require public schools – exempted under Sims’ original plan – to live by the same rules as private schools and churches starting in 2008.
Sullivan said some of the concerns raised about her proposal after its introduction last week resulted from drafting errors and misinterpretation.
But Grace Yuan, a lobbyist for public-school districts, said Sullivan’s plan would prevent the Snoqualmie Valley School District from building a new high school now planned for construction on a rural site after 2008.
Dan Sherman of the Washington Federation of Independent Schools said private schools should be treated the same as public schools.
And some church officials said any limits would violate federal law and the state and federal constitutional guarantees to freedom of worship. Among them: a representative of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and the Maple Valley Ministerial Alliance, a group of 12 churches.
Bob King, a member of the board of the TimberLake Christian Fellowship, which wants to build an 80,000-square-foot church near Redmond, said big churches provide day care, recreation, meals and health care.
“The large church is here to stay,” King said. “It’s growing rapidly because it’s needed.”
But others argued that big churches do as much harm to the environment as any other big building.
“No one sets out deliberately to promote urban sprawl,” said Jim Mulligan, director of Earth Ministry, a Christian environmental group. “… Sprawl is what we will have without carefully constructed guidelines.”
Jim Driesen of Hobart agreed: “If you want to build an urban-size church, go live in the city.”
Several churches asked the council for exemptions from the moratorium for projects already on the drawing board. So did Overlake School, near Redmond, which wants a new gym.
Councilwoman Jane Hague, R-Bellevue, said she hoped to introduce legislation by Thursday allowing exemptions. But Sullivan said that would be unwise.