Amulek

Noticed that the room has all six flags that have flown over Texas. Tactfully, they went with the first Confederate flag, rather than the stars and bars. Probably for the best.

6:40 - They're in closed session with (own) legal counsel now. Remainder of Church attorneys just showed up. Should be kicking things off here in a bit.

Thirty seven minutes to start time. Far more residents than non-residents present. Based on shirt colors, the majority of residents are on the opposition side, but there are more supportive residents than I may have guessed. In aggregate, I would say there are more supporters than opponents in the room.

Made it in (first five non-residents admitted), so maybe we'll live blog this sucker. Observation one: turnout is significantly smaller. We've had thunderstorms throughout the day today, so that may be part of it. Fatigue may be playing a roll as well.

Sure. People leave the Church for a variety of reasons (e.g., intellectual, emotional, cultural, spiritual, etc.). Conversely, I think it's also important to keep in mind that, although members believe departing from covenants does carry spiritual consequences, that doesn't mean we automatically assume someone left because they wanted to sin, or that they had immoral motives.

P&Z meeting to be live streamed at 7pm Central, here, and will probably run for at least two hours. The chamber only seats 50 people which will be divided on a first come, first admitted basis: 25 for residents and 25 for non-residents. With my work schedule and the limited number of slots, I probably won't be getting in, but I'll swing by and check things out. Ultimately, I'll probably just go home and watch online like everyone else. Look for additional updates later tonight / tomorrow.

Based on the laws in the jurisdiction, I don't believe the opposition was unreasonable here. I think the Church was just kind of hoping the proposal would fly under the radar and that nobody would really have a problem with it, even if it was technically outside the scope of what is allowed by law. The school board was certainly fine with the idea, and they seemed to believe they had a colorable justification for allowing it, but once people started making a (legitimate) stink about it, we decided to drop out of the deal. I'm fine with that.

Update: here or here. Looks like the Church has opted to not go through with it.

After listening to over two and a half hours worth of comments, the planning and zoning commission for the town of Fairview recommended to deny the Church's application for a conditional use permit. Here's a short news clip on the results: link I watched the entire meeting and will try to remember to come back and update this post with a link to the audio recording when it becomes available. It's somewhere around three hours long so it makes for a pretty boring listen. I know that some of you are into podcasts though, so there might be a few masochists out there who would be willing to suffer through it. There were a couple of things that stood out to me. I was pleasantly surprised to see formal support from other religious groups in the area. There was woman there representing the Salvation Army (from the McKinney location) who spoke in favor of the Church and a regional Muslim leader who did the same. I felt like those who were in opposition to the current proposal did their best, with varying degrees of success, to express that they merely take issue with the size / design of the temple and not with it's existence. There was a lot of commentary about building heights, church heights, and how they just want the Church to follow the zoning rules, and not one inch more. One of the Church's representatives made a comment about that very sentiment and indicated how the Church more or less agrees with them. The Church isn't asking for anything that is inconsistent with what has been allowed historically. While it is true that other religious structures aren't comparably large, it is also true that the town has granted variances to other religious groups for comparably tall religious structures situated in similar areas (i.e., exact same zoning, on the exact same street). The town is perfectly within their rights to regulate the construction of new buildings (even religious buildings) in a neutral manner. However, if they are going to grant an exception to those codes for the Methodists down the street to build a bell tower in excess of 150', then they don't get to turn around and tell the Mormons to pound sand. And no, it doesn't matter that the Methodists ultimately abandoned constructing their building. The fact that the variance was given to one needs it needs to be given here as well. Ultimately, I got kind of fed up with hearing so many people harp on how the Church doesn't need to have a steeple and how we should be good neighbors and compromise. I can only imagine someone saying to Rosa Parks, 'I'm sorry ma'am, but do you really need to sit in the font row of the bus? Couldn't you just be a good neighbor and move a little more toward the back?' Sorry, that's simply not how freedom works.