The church sold their former building, on East Main Street, to a developer who built the new Walgreens Drug Store. With $2M from the developer, the church plans to build a 10,000 square foot building.
At Wednesday's Finance and Government Operations Commission meeting, Chairman Ron Klattenberg explained that the proposal had come before the Public Works Commission, which had declined to forward it to Council for consideration. He explained that he could not support the waiver of fees, "Permit fees are always part of the construction costs." He also said that the Council had recently made a change in policy, to eliminate the waiver of fees.
Joe Bibisi raised the issue of fairness, pointing out that several years ago the church on Cross Street received a waiver of building permit fees. Another Commissioner responded that even the show-mobile fees were no longer being waived for any non-profits.
Phil Pessina joined Bibisi and Hope Kasper in calling for the full Council to hear the fee waiver request by the Shiloh Christian Church.
The Council will consider this at their Monday meeting.
Agreed. Fee waivers should not be considered unless the group can prove a hardship. It should not be extended to non-profit groups as a matter of course. Regardless of the economy, non-profit educational and religious organizations get far too many tax breaks that other "businesses" pay.
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