Wednesday, April 05, 2006

CALEB WARNOCK - Daily Herald   

After listening for two hours to comments from dozens of residents -- many angry -- Alpine planning commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday night to deny the site plan of a controversial charter school.

About 300 people filled the auditorium of Timberline Middle School for the public hearing. City Council members are expected to vote on final approval or denial of the site plan next week.

Tuesday night wasn't the first time residents spoke out against the charter school. Last month about 60 people gathered to protest the school's location because of the traffic it would bring to the neighborhood and historic flooding in the area.

School organizers have proposed to build a 50,000-square-foot, two-story school on the site to accommodate 675 K-8 students and 45 faculty members, said Shane Sorensen, city engineer. According to the state's charter school directory, the school is scheduled to open in August.

Mayor Hunt Willoughby opened the public hearing by saying Mountainville Academy "has been kind of an emotional issue. We're all adults, neighbors and friends. Let's be kind to each other."

But over and over again during Tuesday's meeting, the crowd flouted the stated rules of the hearing to applaud and occasionally boo a speaker. Many times after commission chairwoman Jannicke Brewer pounded her gavel attempting to take control, the crowd laughed out loud, sometimes applauding anyway.

One after another, many residents living near the proposed school, 350 E. 100 South in Alpine, stood to say they did not want the school in their backyard. About a dozen residents spoke in favor of the location.

After listening to residents, Commissioner Lincoln Watkins said he felt the location could never be approved because state law says "the school site shall not be located in an area where there is a history or high possibility of flooding."

Those who opposed the school brought a poster-sized photo of the location taken during a flood in 1953. That evidence alone rules out the location, despite a letter the city received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in January officially removing the site from a flood plain map at the request of school developers, Watkins said.

He faulted school founders for not approaching the city for regulatory permissions until after land was "purchased and a groundbreaking scheduled. ... I don't understand how the charter school can even recommend to propose this site. The entire area was flooded and on that alone we cannot approve this. I can only surmise the charter school ignored this law.

"I feel sorry for the supporters of the charter school. I think you have to feel disappointed the law was not complied with."

In an interview after the meeting, school founder Rebecca Whitchurch confirmed that school organizers were under contract to purchase the property for the school. Before deciding what to do next, organizers will wait for a final decision to approve or deny the site plan from City Council members next week. She said it was not immediately clear whether the school could break the contract to purchase the land if the city denied the site plan.

In their vote, commissioners said they wanted to make it clear they were not voting to deny the school, just the proposed location. Audience members broke out in the loudest applause of the evening after the vote.

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 344-2543 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.