On Local Government
On land use and religion
A great brouhaha is developing over the proposed opening of an Islamic cultural center in a former Burlington Coat Factory store a few blocks from the site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.
There are basically three sides in the argument. One says that no one has the right to limit where such a facility is placed, if the underlying land use structure permits it. Another agrees, but indicates that it may not be such a good idea to put such a facility so close to a monument to terrorism perpetrated by people espousing Islam.
The third group doesn’t really care about legality. They only want to punish all people who practice Islam.
No matter how the issue resolves itself, the relationship between local governments and organized religion is a difficult one. Under the First Amendment, freedom of religion is not only codified, but the making of any laws limiting it are also illegal.
Thus, taxation which may be financially onerous to the maintenance of a particular religion or sect, is illegal. That makes the property taxes that would be generated from a different kind of business on a parcel uncollectable from a religious institution.
However, that does not mean that the religious institution doesn’t create issues for a city that requires expenditures on their part. For example: parking.
On a weekend, or at religious holidays, very often the parking lots of these institutions aren’t large enough to hold all the cars. The residential streets that often surround these places get crowded, making it difficult for people to, for example, invite guests to a Sunday morning “do.”
Usually, the city is brought in to not only try to settle the issue, but enforce it. That requires people, who create costs with no means by which to offset them.
Some may say that this is just part of the process of dealing with the fabric of a city. That may be true, but it circles us back to whether a solution is right for one more mainstream group but not for another who may not be so large in numbers or is feared, for some reason, by a vocal few.
This is the essence of the New York “mosque” argument. Does anyone, under our constitutional structure, have the right to say no to a religious group placing a cultural center anywhere it wishes?
This has nothing to do with the sensitivity that surrounds this issue. Some believe that by placing such a center near where so many people, including followers of Islam, died at the hand of Islamic radicals, it is a statement of solidarity with those who died, not with those who killed them. For others, they would probably like to have an Islamic detector at the doors of whatever is being built at the site to keep them away altogether.
As usual, the answer is probably in the middle, with some kind of compromise. But, as also is usual, the edges of the argument will get the media play and nothing but recriminations will get aired.
That’s, I guess, the freedom of speech part of that same amendment. ER