By Clarence Cromwell
Town Council members made a tactical retreat Sept. 4, rather than give final approval to the expansion of Los Gatos Christian Church School.
Michael Burke charged the council with breaking its own rules in the way it approved the project. After handing them a 10-page legal document that he spent the weekend researching, Burke asked councilmembers to call off the routine second reading of the church's approval and reverse the decision.
Burke and a handful of Hicks Road anti-growth residents will make their last stand against the church at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Town Council Chambers. The council put off the decision until then to give members time to analyze Burke's claims and for the church to come up with a response.
Burke said that the council can't overturn the planning commission on the matter, because the commission didn't make a mistake or decide on a matter outside its authority and no new information was submitted. The Town Code only allows the commission to be overturned under one of those circumstances.
Burke added--among numerous other technicalities--that the project just doesn't follow the general plan or the hillside specific plan, and therefore cannot be approved. Burke said the church will bring unsafe levels of traffic and too much noise.
"This intensive use is not in harmony with the rural area," Burke said.
Burke and other neighbors have fought vehemently to stop the church expansion and construction of a brand-new private elementary school, by Challenger Schools, on a parcel nearby. Hicks Road residents are alarmed at the nearly 800 students a day the schools will bring down the rural, two-lane road.
The council, however, already concluded that the project is in line with the general plan, a requirement for approval of the project.
One reason the document contains so many points against the council decision is that if the neighbors sue the town over its decision, they can only bring up issues mentioned in public hearings--so Burke wanted to put all his complaints on the record.
He emphasized, however, that he'd rather not go to court.
"I don't see myself as a troublemaker," Burke said. But he believes the council disregarded neighbors' concerns over expansion of the church, he said, and he thinks they have figured heavily in the decision.
"I'm trying to look out for what's best for myself, my family and my neighborhood," Burke said. "I think I'm in the right here."
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, September 11, 1996.
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