TYLER, Texas (KLTV) – The mayor of Fairview, Texas recently announced in a letter to the residents of Fairview that the town is going into non-binding mediation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In this letter, Mayor Henry Lessner also states that the council approved a “Zoning Defense Fund” to “protect the town if there is litigation.”
This comes after a public meeting was held to discuss the potential temple that would be located in Fairview, where the conditional use permit was denied.
The proposed McKinney area temple affects most Latter-day Saints church members in East Texas, as it would be their assigned temple in which they take part in ordinances considered sacred within the Church. Currently, East Texas members of the Church perform those ordinances at the Dallas temple.
The Church argued that temple engineers and architects complied with all town ordinances, and that both federal and state laws allow places of worship the ability to be constructed at the heights that were proposed.
In an interview on Thursday, Mayor Lessner stated that they worked with the Church, but the building was too big for the residential zone it was set for.
“The issue is, and has been, our zoning laws,” Lessner said. “It’s 35 feet. We have already essentially allowed them to double and go up to 68 feet.
They went up to 68 feet on their meeting house with their steeple, and we are willing to allow that to happen again. But there is a point of when big is big and we don’t want to get any bigger.”
The main purpose of the upcoming mediation is to try and find a middle group that the two groups can work with.
Lessner says that both sides have been strong in their stances on the temple, but they hope that this meeting will break through and find a way to make it work.
“I suspect it will be a very difficult kind of meeting,” Lessner said. “I don’t want to speculate what is going to happen because, who knows?
I don’t know what they are thinking about. It might be a really short meeting, but I hope not.”
Lessner said he is looking forward to finding to a solution.
“I’m hoping there are things we can do to come up and accommodate them on that site, or we can help them in some manner to find a spot nearby,” Lessner said.
KLTV also reached out to the Church for comment on the upcoming meeting.
“The Church looks forward to meeting with the town representatives and working with them on ways to meet the community’s concerns while, at the same time, protecting the Church’s religious liberty rights,” said Melissa McKneely, the Communication Director of the Dallas East Coordinating Council for the Church.
The meeting will take place on Nov.18.
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