Bowing to public pressure, Mayor Larry O'Brien Thursday told officials at the Roman Catholic Polish church, located on LeBreton North and Louisa Street, that the city has no problem with their parishioners using the church-owned property across the street to park their cars while they're at mass.
In a radio interview, O'Brien, with an eye, no doubt, on the civic elections this fall, claimed he had no idea there was a conflict between the city and the parish.
But parish council president Roger Furmanczyk said he sent the mayor e-mails describing the situation months ago.
He said that he is happy and relieved that a resolution has been found but that the parish will still be left with the $12,000 to $15,000 tab for legal fees.
Asked if he thought the city would cover the bill Furmanczyk said, "That would be a miracle!."
The problems started when parishioners, leaving the church after mass every Sunday in February, were greeted by bylaw officers taking pictures of their license plates in the church-owned parking lot across the street. Furmanczyk says the bylaw officers seemed like the paparazzi .
The officers were there to gather evidence of the parishioners improperly using the residentially zoned property as a parking lot in order to serve the church with an order to appear for violating a zoning bylaw.
The parish bought the property at 27 Louisa St. in 1989 to build a 20-space church parking lot for their swelling ranks.
Standing on the property, however, was an eight-unit rooming house that local residents and Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes didn’t want to see razed due to a shortage of affordable housing.
Instead of demolishing the house, the church retrofitted the building into two apartment units and paved the gravel parking lots beside it which made room for 12 additional spaces.
For 20 years there wasn’t a problem with this arrangement, but in 2009 after bylaw officers investigated a neighbour’s complaint about snow removal city staff realized that the property was being used as a parking lot.
“Then those dodos decided they were going to make an issue out of it,” says Furmanczyk.
During a court appearance April 19, the judge told the city and the church to avoid litigation by trying to come up with a solution to the problem.
Accordingly, Furmanczyk says he and the church’s lawyer drew up five sworn affidavits by members of the congregation that stated the church had used the property without incident as a small parking lot for 20 years. Then Furmanczyk says the parking enforcement manager, Craig Calder, denied the truthfulnessof the affidavits and “called us liars.”
Calder was unavailable for comment.
After that, Furmancyk says he emailed city councillors to see if they could offer any help in resolving the conflict.
All of the councillors responded with strong support and promised to look into the matter.
Barrhaven Ward Coun. Jan Harder said: “I know exactly where the church is. I have several friends that attend this church and this is completely ridiculous.” She also said that she had attended several funerals there herself and Furmancyk says he wonders if she used their parking lot.
Kanata North Ward Coun. Marianne Wilkinson said that she would urge the city to resolve the
conflict without using recourse to legal technicalities.
River Ward Coun. Maria Mcrae sent Furmancyk a letter she sent to city staff that asked them to “follow up on this, this is ridiculous.”
Orleans Ward Coun. Bob Monette said: “It seems strange that after 20 years all of a sudden we have a problem. Can we please direct city staff to resolve this with a common sense approach. We should be encouraging the use of this church not putting roadblocks in the way.”
Despite the encouraging words, Furmancyk says all of a sudden councillors stopped responding to his requests to speak with them.
“Most noteworthy of all,” he says “is the lack of response from our councilor Diane Holmes.”
Holmes is on holidays and unavailable for comment.
Furmanczyk attributes their tight lips to the fact that city staff say the matter is under litigation and therefore they are unable to discuss it. What, he says, he doesn’t understand is why the judge told the church and the city to hammer out out a resolution if no one will discuss the discuss with him or anyone else.
According to the St. Hyacinth’s lawyer the solution is really simple. All they need to do is pay $250 for an application for the legal non-conforming right to use a property, which would make rezoning unnecessary.
As a result of the church’s parking woes, many of its members are opting to attend mass in English at other churches.
“We’re the only Polish language parish in the Ottawa-Gatineau region and there are more than 20,000 of us here. We usually have 250 a mass on Sunday, now because of parking we’re losing about a hundred a mass,” says Furmanczyk.
He says this is having a negative financial impact on donations to the parish which needs funds more than ever now that it faces between $12,000 and $15,000 in legal fees as a result of the city’s actions. “I don’t understand why this (happened), this is a democratic society, it’s not as if we are under communism anymore,” said Furmanczyk.