Photo from Google
A sign welcomes people to Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hoover, Alabama.
The Hoover City Council on Monday night voted 5-1 against allowing Trinity Presbyterian Church to deannex its property off Alabama 119 from the city limits.
Church leaders were hoping to start operating a K-8 school Tuesday, Aug. 11, on the church property at 7160 Cahaba Valley Road, across from Tattersall Park, but they needed “conditional use” approval from the city of Hoover to legally operate a school there.
Church leaders said they did not initially realize they needed approval from the city to open the school, and when they found out, they didn’t have enough time to go through the zoning change process before school was set to start Tuesday.
The fallback plan was to deannex from Hoover. Church leaders and Hoover City Attorney Charlie Waldrep said that, if the church were deannexed, Shelby County officials were willing to let the church operate a school temporarily while the church went through the county’s process to get “conditional use” approval for a school.
Hoover has no mechanism that would allow the church to operate a school temporarily without such a zoning change, City Planner Mac Martin said.
Waldrep’s legal team drafted a restrictive covenant that would have required the property to only be used as a church or school and that gave the city the first right to purchase the property if the church ever decided to sell it. This was proposed as a condition for the deannexation as a way to protect the city from the property being converted to a less amenable use in the future.
However, the vote against the deannexation was 5-1, with only Council President Casey Middlebrooks voting in favor of the deannexation.
Councilman Robin Schultz said he received more input on this issue than anything else since he was elected last year and said residents were adamantly opposed to allowing the church to deannex from the city.
Most people were not really opposed to the school, but they were concerned that if the property were deannexed, the city of Hoover would lose control over what could go there and that could lead to something with a less desirable use, Schultz said.
Even if the church agreed to a restrictive covenant, there’s not a 100% guarantee a covenant would forever remain in force, he said.
He wishes someone could have found a way to make this work for the school, but there are rules in place and the city and church have to follow the zoning rules, he said.
Councilman Steve McClinton said deannexation was not the right solution, especially in the U.S. 280 area where jurisdictional lines are jumbled so much between Hoover, Birmingham and Shelby County.
This is a prime example of where the city needs to streamline its zoning process so it doesn’t take so long to get a zoning change approved, he and Middlebooks said. Because of all the required legal notifications for surrounding property owners, It generally takes about three months to obtain a zoning change, Martin said.
Councilwoman Ashley Lovell said some people might look at the zoning process as a stumbling block or red flag when in fact it’s an open door for the public to participate in the zoning process and a protection for residents.
Martin said the conditional use process allows people to seek approval for uses that aren’t automatically allowed in certain zoning districts. This particular property is in a C-2 commercial district. Requiring conditional use approval for a school allows city leaders to more closely examine potential impacts of requested land uses, Martin said.
Lovell, who lives in Greystone, said foregoing the “conditional use” process takes away the rights of nearby property owners who should have a say about what comes into their neighborhood.
Councilman Gene Smith said he’s not trying to point fingers but someone at the church or advising the church dropped the ball about what the requirements are to operate a school.
“That is what has caused us to be where we are today,” Smith said. “Ya’ll basically dumped this in our lap, and that put us in a very serious situation.”
After the vote Monday night, Pastor Rich Lusk declined to comment immediately about the council’s decision and said he would comment at a later time. Efforts to reach Lusk for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Lusk previously had said the church already had enrolled students, accepted “schoool choice” money from the state, hired teachers and was expecting more than 40 students from 22 families on the first day of school Tuesday.
McClinton said it’s unfortunate the church found itself in this position but he believes the church should be able to come up with a way to operate temporarily until it can go through the “conditional use” process to get proper approval. Perhaps the church can do some type of online or virtual instruction until that occurs, he said.
