Marion Avenue Baptist gets ordinance exception

WASHINGTON — City council members voted unanimously last week in favor of a variance for Marion Avenue Baptist Church, after complaints about the building’s bus parking crowding out other vehicles on the square Sunday mornings.

Buses for the church have traditionally parked around the building parallel to the curb. When that practice’s violation of city code was brought up earlier this year, staff tried other parking places. At the city council meeting Sept. 20, Pastor Joseph Brown asked for a return to the old approach.

“For 49 years, we’ve parked them a certain way,” he said. “We’ve never had a ticket that we know of, we’ve never had a neighbor complaint … and we’ve never had an accident.”

Brown said the parking violation’s impact was minimal, as buses crowded the surrounding streets on Sunday mornings, when many businesses on the square were closed.

“When our buses are not there, it’s either nobody parks there or our church members park there,” he said.

Dan Woodward, the church’s bus director, said the transportation program ran around 10 buses a week, each unloading around the church instead of "live unloads,“ where people exit the running bus at the building’s front door.

“We decided to go bumper to bumper and basically make an enclosure, that way there’s no way to get out into the street,” he said. “I don’t allow drivers to do live unloads. Your risk exposure is so much greater when your engine’s running, there’s cross traffic, there’s blind corners … we haven’t had an accident in a loading process in 32 years.”

Woodward said parking buses off-site meant loading people back on with the bus in the middle of the street, a more logistically challenging and dangerous process.

While the variance has no expiration date, Council Member Steve Gault, who has vocally criticized the church’s parking practices in the past, said it should be temporary.

“When they get the alley open, where their new building is, they can stack the buses that are on the south side in the alley,” he said. “There will be no access to the street at all … I would have no problem with a variance allowing them the way they’ve been doing it until the alley is done.”

Brown said use of the alley was a little more complicated. The area is currently closed for construction of another building on church property — which church leaders expect to finish by May — but even when it opens, the pastor said alley parking would be complicated.

One issue is a residential driveway that shares the alleyway, where residents would be blocked in by buses parked on Sundays. Another is the alley’s access: with street parking blocking the path east, buses could only enter and exit the area on the west side, a slower process on a still-busy street. Even then, only five buses could fit inside at a time.

Mayor Jaron Rosien said the city would consider a separate variance for alley parking at a later date.

“I feel like that’s a new request,” he said. “If that is a fit, if the backing, the turning, the residential people in the alley, if those issues work toward resolution, I’m understanding that as a new ask.”

City Attorney Kevin Olson said the variance decision wouldn’t set a major precedent.

“Not enough people have 10 buses they would park,” he said.

Despite the permanent nature of the variance approved by the city, Council Member Elaine Moore said officials should keep an open dialogue.

“We’ve got some really good communication going with the church,” she said. “Even though we have this long-term variance going, let’s keep the aisles between us going here. And sometime, down the road, maybe we’ll have an answer to all of the parking problems.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com