Join Rebecca and Landon (Mormonish) and Radio Free Mormon (RFM) as we review for the Mormon Stories audience the history and status of the Mormon church’s attempts to construct very tall temples that in many instances violate local city ordinances for height and/or light.
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guests: Landon, Radio Free Mormon, Rebecca Villateca
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introducing the Episode and Guests
Guest [00:00:00] Foreign.
John Dehlin [00:00:04] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's June 4, 2024, and we are so excited to bring to you a story that in the extended Mormon podcast world has been covered extensively and it's been covered almost none by Mormon Stories Podcast, except for the occasional Mormon newscast episode. But we are here today to talk about, as I call it, the Mormon Temple Steeple wars, because this is a really interesting topic that is getting national and potentially is about to get even more national news coverage. And I am so over the moon thrilled to have with us live in Studio 3, fellow Epic Game changing podcasters. I will begin. She will be. Her name will be no surprise to those of you paying attention these days. She's a force to be reckoned with. The one, the only, Rebecca Villateca. Hey, Rebecca.
Rebecca Villateca [00:01:07] Hey, John. How are you tonight?
John Dehlin [00:01:08] Thanks for joining us.
Rebecca Villateca [00:01:09] Oh, I'm so excited. You know, this topic I talk about to death. So I'm really happy to be able to do it here on your program.
John Dehlin [00:01:15] For those who don't know, and all of you should, Rebecca is a co host of the podcast called and the YouTube channel called Mormonish. And y', all, y' all have had a great year, haven't you?
Rebecca Villateca [00:01:26] It's been really fun. Yeah. We have just had so many amazing guests and such amazing support from fellow podcasters. That's one of the funnest things and really interesting topics. And we kind of fell into talking about temples and I, I think we've done about 18 podcasts so far. Updates every couple weeks because it's just a story that keeps on giving.
John Dehlin [00:01:44] Yeah. So you're really kind of an expert on the story. I had a journalist or two reach out to me and I'm like, rebecca? Yeah, Rebecca's the person to talk to. Anyway, Rebecca also has helped out with the Mormon Stories Book club from time to time. She has her own book club called the Good Book Club. You're just, you're almost everywhere these days, Rebecca.
Rebecca Villateca [00:02:01] I'm overexposed.
John Dehlin [00:02:02] And you just got a nonprofit approved. Do you want to talk about that?
Rebecca Villateca [00:02:06] This is true. We've been trying for a while to become a 501c3. We had some clerical issues, but we had some help from friends and we actually are a nonprofit now, which is amazing because we have a lot of people that have, you know, told us we'd love to donate and we'd love to help you guys. And so we did it. We're really excited. I know it sounds like a small thing, but for us, it took a lot.
Guest [00:02:25] We did it.
John Dehlin [00:02:26] So subscribe to Mormon ish on YouTube and also donate to Is it the Mormonish nonprofit. Yeah.
Guest 2 [00:02:34] Okay.
Guest 3 [00:02:35] All right.
Rebecca Villateca [00:02:36] Our links are all in our show notes and on our YouTube page and Facebook, so.
John Dehlin [00:02:39] All right. All right, Rebecca. And if that weren't enough, we have appearing. Is this for the first time, Landon?
Landon [00:02:46] Yeah, this is my first time.
John Dehlin [00:02:47] We have Rebecca's partner in truth. As I like to say, truth and righteousness.
Guest 4 [00:02:51] Landon.
John Dehlin [00:02:52] Hey, Landon.
Guest 2 [00:02:52] Hello, John.
John Dehlin [00:02:53] Thanks for coming.
Landon [00:02:54] Hey, good to be here.
John Dehlin [00:02:55] What has taken us so long to have you on Mormon stories?
Landon [00:02:58] I. I couldn't tell you.
John Dehlin [00:02:59] It's my fault. My bad. But we're atoning today.
Landon [00:03:03] That's right. I'm excited to be here. This is a topic that we're passionate about. So glad to be here to discuss this.
John Dehlin [00:03:09] Super happy to have you. Y' all are doing great work.
Landon [00:03:12] Thank you.
John Dehlin [00:03:13] And. And I was going to say last but not, not least, and then I was going to make some joke about the dregs of the podcasting world. Just kidding. We have the legend, the greatest, most handsome, most intelligent, most witty, most funny. Did I say most handsome already?
Radio Free Mormon [00:03:33] Yeah, but you can say it again.
John Dehlin [00:03:35] Most handsome. Radio Free Mormon in studio. Hey, rfm.
Guest 5 [00:03:39] John.
Radio Free Mormon [00:03:39] I just happen to be in town and I'm showing up on the temple show, so I will try to keep my comments to a minimum. By the way, Rebecca likes it when you refer to Landon as her caddy, so if you do that a few times, you'll be making her happy.
Rebecca Villateca [00:03:57] We can't take you anywhere, can we?
John Dehlin [00:04:00] Well, I'm really thrilled to have you all three here and to talk about this super important episode. And if that weren't enough, we do have slides, we have video, and we have a super special surprise. And I don't even know how to talk about the surprise, because it's such a surprise, but something very is likely to happen about an hour, hour and a half from now. Rebecca, how do we talk about that? Or do we just leave a cliffhanger? What do we do?
Rebecca Villateca [00:04:28] I think we leave a cliffhanger, but we do give a little explanation in the fact that we're going to kind of give an overview of various temples that are being built by the LDS Church around the nation. We're going to kind of give some general information and an overview, but then we're going to focus on a temple that's going to be built in February, Fairview, Texas. It's going to be called the McKinney Texas Temple, which is the city next door. That's kind of an interesting story, but there is a town council meeting happening tonight in Fairview, and we are going to show, probably about an hour from now, some of that meeting.
Rebecca Villateca [00:05:01] Now, this is a town where the planning commission has already voted not to recommend the temple will be built there. And again, the story behind this and all the temples that we're going to discuss is that these temples, they're attempting to build them in areas that are residential and not zoned for a building of that massive size. So there's sort of a playbook in getting into towns and working around the systems. In McKinney, this is the first area that we've covered on Mormonish podcast where the planning and zoning board actually said, we recommend no, not. Not in the way that it's been presented back to the drawing board.
Rebecca Villateca [00:05:37] We have never seen that before in every other town through various means, it's been approved. And so the meeting tonight is the town council. It goes from the recommendation of the planning board to the town council.
Guest 5 [00:05:48] So.
Rebecca Villateca [00:05:49] So this is a big deal. And Latter Day Saints are mobilizing to support residents. There are also mobilizing to say, you know, let's think about this for a minute. Let's work with this. Let's find a different workaround. So hopefully in our conversation leading up to the meeting, you'll kind of get the big picture on this. And then when you watch a little of this meeting, I think it'll be really interesting to all of you.
John Dehlin [00:06:11] All right. And of course, we're really grateful for our live audience. We've asked Maven to both moderate the chat and star any super interesting comments or questions. So, Maven, thanks for doing that. And Julie is holding down the time codes and show notes. So we're ready to begin. And we've got all these slides that Rebecca and Nemo helped us put together. Nemo. Nemo the Mormon has been covering this topic as well. And so why don't we have you take it away?
Overview of the Temple Steeple Wars
Rebecca Villateca [00:06:40] Let's do it. And that's true. I should mention Nemo, you know, he kind of caught the temple busting bug, and he has been doing a really good job of getting information on a much wider scale than the rest of us. So good for you, Nemo. You're amazing.
Rebecca Villateca [00:06:53] So, yes, we're calling this the Mormon Temple Steeple Wars. And I did put together a few slides just to kind of go through some things in general. How we even started this crazy business on Mormon ish One of our viewers contacted us and said there's something happening in Cody, Wyoming. The LDS Church is proposing to build a church in a residential area. And there are some residents that are confused, concerned and wondering what's happening. And they wondered if they could reach out to us and maybe we could give them some background or information about the LDS Church and try to help them understand what was happening in their town.
Rebecca Villateca [00:07:26] So if we go to the next slide, we can show you a picture of the Cody, Wyoming temple if you, John, maybe want to read really quickly the stats on the screen right there. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:07:35] So Cody, Wyoming Temple, 10,000 square feet, 101 foot high spire. Pay attention to that number of the height of the spire. It will come again at other temples. And announced 3rd of October, 2021. And let me just add, we should all tell those never Mormon who don't know that, you know, the current Mormon prophet Russell M. Nelson has sort of taken on as his like, brand or his shtick or his special focus. Just outrageous high quantities of temple building in the past. Mormon prophets have built I don't know how many temples on average in the past five.
Rebecca Villateca [00:08:11] Yeah, I mean he's leaps and bounds beyond anything that any other prophets has, has, has tried like hundred or hundreds. Hundreds, yeah. About 20 announced at each conference, I would say.
Guest 4 [00:08:21] Yeah.
Rebecca Villateca [00:08:21] And a lot of these are not built yet, but they're in the works and they're announced.
John Dehlin [00:08:26] Yeah. Okay. So Cody is, is now it's 101 foot super high. Not so super high.
Rebecca Villateca [00:08:32] Not super high compared to some of the other ones that we're talking about. But again, Landon and I visited Cody, Wyoming and it's right there in a residential neighborhood right smack between a couple houses. It's on some land that was donated by a member and before the town even knew that there was a temple there. Of course the LDS people know it's introduced in conference announced modules. I'll call it a tip up temple. A pop up temple had been moved onto nearby land that was owned by a member who had donated the land for the temple. So those modules were already sitting there before anyone in the town.
Rebecca Villateca [00:09:02] The sleepy little town of Cody, Wyoming even knew that anything was happening. And as we talk about today, the playbook and maybe Landon can talk a little bit more about this. This is kind of how it is. There's a lot of things that happen. The scenes before your normal resident wakes up in the morning and there's a note on the door or a letter in the mailbox that says, hey, there's a temple coming and there's a meeting in two hours. I'm being facetious there, but very quickly. Would you say that's true, Landon? Sort of a behind the scenes things happening before people recognize it?
Landon [00:09:31] Yeah, and I don't think we even recognized it when we first started to cover this. We went up to Cody, we started talking to some of the residents, and we could see by time we started watching it, they were already in the planning meeting process and going through the permitting. But what we learned as we started seeing different temples come start contacting us, we got contacted by Heber after Cody, and then we got contacted by Lone, Lone, Lone Mountain, Lone Mountain in Nevada, and then McKinney Temple. So but as we started comparing the different things that were happening, we started putting a playbook together and we could start seeing what was happening.
Landon [00:10:15] And the first thing that we see happen is that before the church even purchases the land or makes the announcement about the land is that they start the rezoning process, they start changing zoning codes and laws within the town that the people don't even know is happening at the time that it's that they're making the changes. And then sometimes they make it under guise of high, high density density housing. Yeah, high, high density housing. And we saw that the second thing they do is they put people in place in order to help them to accomplish this. In Cody, the city planner was lds. So immediately when there's a temple announced in your city and you're the city planner, you, you know, there's no doubt you're going to call and find out where that might be going at.
Landon [00:11:10] So not only they put the city planner, but they put onto the planning commission, they put on someone who was lds, who was a bishop. They released him as bishop just in time for him to get on the board. And that happened just three months before they announced that, before they applied for the permit. And so now they have people in place and what we could see. And after they started doing the Freedom of Information act and started getting emails, you could see that there were things going on behind the scenes. Coordination and contacts being made to help push the temple forward by these people that were on the board.
Guest 5 [00:11:49] Right.
Rebecca Villateca [00:11:49] And I will say, if I can say when you talk about the Freedom of Information act, this is something that we suggested to the residents in Cody because they mobilized, they formed a neighborhood association, and again, what they're trying to say is please build a temple in our town, but please don't change our zoning codes, don't manipulate our political system. Build it somewhere, work with the residents. You know, we welcome a temple. Unfortunately, they're often called anti Mormon or you know, religious bigots. That's not what they're saying at all. But we suggested to all the residents that we talked to use the Freedom of Information act and see if you can find some emails from behind the scene.
Rebecca Villateca [00:12:21] And Landon is absolutely correct. These emails which are on record in Cody, been reported on in many newspapers in the Cody area, revealed some things going on behind the scenes scenes here. So maybe we go to our next slide because I know we're trying to make some progress here. Those are the modules that are in place. They were on a member's property for over a year and a half. They've now been moved right up next to the temple. Because in Cody, Wyoming they had a final hearing and the decision should be next week or so. The judge will either say back to the drawing board or the judge is going to say go ahead and build the temple either way.
Cody, Wyoming Temple Dispute and City Planner Resignation
Rebecca Villateca [00:12:57] So if we can go to our next, next slide, we can go through a few other things that happen in Cody very quickly. This one I believe says, Sorry, I can't read it.
John Dehlin [00:13:07] Church threatens to bankrupt Cody.
Guest 3 [00:13:09] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:13:09] This is another article in the Cody Enterprise.
Guest 1 [00:13:11] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:13:12] That says LDS rep says further litigation will cost city. That sounds ominous.
Rebecca Villateca [00:13:16] Yeah, it is very ominous. And this is what we've seen in every city they have a friendly town meeting. You get a note on your door like I described and you show up to this meeting and we're going to play some tape I think later from one of the meetings and the lawyers talk and they sort of allude to. When you say this is how it is, Landon just sort of like, well, you better play ball or else it can get ominous. Can't even say it. And if you go to the next slide, I think that's another headline where they did or the next one past that.
John Dehlin [00:13:42] Okay.
Rebecca Villateca [00:13:43] Yeah. They did threaten several. Two lawsuits, I think threatening a third. I think it was so very interesting.
John Dehlin [00:13:50] Some of the articles. LDS Church sues City of Cody over Planning process.
Rebecca Villateca [00:13:56] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:13:56] And then LDS Church files a second lawsuit.
Guest 2 [00:13:58] Rfm.
John Dehlin [00:13:59] As our resident attorney, who would Jesus sue? I just am curious. If Jesus were to sue someone, would it be over a temple? I mean he did throw, he did turn over the tables and throw the money changers out. So clearly Jesus gets upset around temple issues.
Radio Free Mormon [00:14:16] I think he gets upset when Jesus as the story to go, I think the. What is it? The, the turning over the tables at the temple is one of the few Stories that's told in all four gospels. So I think that it's represented as his being upset with the way the temple's being used as opposed to the temple itself. By the way, I've been sitting on this one line that have been, okay, so this, the temple in McKinney is 171, the spire 171ft high. It's so high that they're going to be calling it the McKinney Temple minus one. The McKinney Temple minus one minus one. That I have to tell that joke. Prick. Because it's got such a short life, short shelf life. It's probably short. Nobody gets it. You get it, right?
John Dehlin [00:15:04] Of course. I get all your jokes.
Rebecca Villateca [00:15:07] Everybody, everybody laughs at everything you say. If you go back one slide, even the city planner who we met was the LDS did talk about the members on the planning board and say they might personally be sued or personally might be in trouble if they didn't interpret the, you know, the, what they were trying to do the correct way. So there's a lot of stress and I would say low level or even high level intimidation. Would you say that, Landon?
Guest 3 [00:15:32] Yeah, that's.
Landon [00:15:32] We've seen that in several places where the church not only threatens that they're going to sue the planning commission, you know, the city, but they're going to personally sue the members of the planning committee. And in that slide that you just saw in that, in that paper, they act, some of the planning commission people say, hey, we were told we would personally be sued if we didn't pass this. So you can imagine going in when you're from a small town and you're facing a multi hundred billion dollar corporation full of lawyers, that that's quite intimidating to wonder, am I voting the right way on this?
Landon [00:16:07] When you have all these lawyers coming in telling you you must vote for this and they use a specific law that we'll talk about a little bit later, but they use this as their justification that basically they say we can do whatever we want because we're a church and the laws let us bypass all your zoning codes and you have to do whatever we want or we will sue you.
Rebecca Villateca [00:16:29] Yep. And I think we see in this town definitely confusion on people that are voting and what they're voting for. The city manager, the city planner, his job is to these kind of codes and zones to the committee. And they definitely let it be known in those emails that we talked about with the Freedom of Information act, they definitely let it be known that they didn't understand exactly what was happening. The real issue is the steeple.
Rebecca Villateca [00:16:54] They say a temple is only a certain height. Maybe it fits in and then the steeple doesn't count as part of the building. That's the issue. Those are the workarounds that they're trying to go to. And so there's all kinds of variances and things. I know it's very complex, but the idea is, does this building, this height fit into a residential neighborhood? And in this case in Cody, the city planner is trying to tell them, yes, it does. The people on the planning and zoning board are saying, I'm not sure this is correct. There's different variances that are submitted. You know, did they vote for it with the steeple?
Rebecca Villateca [00:17:24] Without the steeple, it's all very confusing. And the next slide, I don't know if we have that up or not. I can see it from here. Very interesting. The city planner definitely took some flack from the community to the point where one of the wealthy members in the area said, and this was revealed in one of the Freedom of Information act emails, don't worry, there's a job waiting for you. You know, you've done a good job here and we'll take care of you. Of course the city planner did not answer that. You know, there's no record that he accepted that, but that's kind of the mindset we've got to get this through no matter what the cost.
Rebecca Villateca [00:17:59] The city planner and Cody did end up resigning event in February and the city washed its hands of trying to fight the church, leaving just a small residence group preserve our Cody neighborhood to actually sue their own city, saying that what the city had passed was passed illegally. And that's what I'm talking about when I say the final hearing was a week or so ago and we're waiting on that ruling. Interestingly, Landon, do you want to talk about what the city put in place to protect really quick?
John Dehlin [00:18:31] I want to make sure we cover that. Who offered who a job?
Rebecca Villateca [00:18:34] Oh, a wealthy member of the church. The one who donated the land and also has the modules sitting on his land. The tip up temple reached out to the LDS city planner and said, I know it's kind of dicey. I know you're not the most popular person doing what you're doing. We'll take care of you. There's a job waiting for you if this all kind of goes south.
John Dehlin [00:18:57] Wow, that's kind of. Is that dirty?
Rebecca Villateca [00:19:00] You know, I don't know. We ask that about all these places. Is it dirty? Is it illegal?
Guest 2 [00:19:04] No.
Rebecca Villateca [00:19:04] Is it unethical? Maybe. There's so many gray areas, it's very hard to really sort through all of it.
Landon [00:19:12] The city planner claims he never responded to the emails. He just received it, but he never, never acted on it. So I think if he'd acted on it, there may have been some question on that. But yeah, I don't think he did anything illegal per se. But towards a steeple. The law says that if you put a steeple on top of a building, that doesn't count towards the height. The problem is if it's built into the building, then it becomes part of the. Part of the building or part of the structure. And the planning commission had pictures of the Casper, Wyoming temple and they saw this still structure that was supporting the steeple and they're asking him, doesn't this count as a steeple?
Landon [00:19:54] Isn't this part of the structure? But they couldn't trust the answers they were getting. In fact, there was one time where the church asked to delay a meeting that was already on the agenda and already planned. And when that came in, the first person that the city planner contacted was the bishops in the ward to let them know that the meeting wasn't going to happen as planned and not to mobilize all the people as planned. Then he let the planning commission know and one of the planning commissioners says, can they do that? Can't we force them to have the meeting? We don't want to cancel the meeting.
Landon [00:20:28] And as a result, he didn't resp. He said, well, we have to have the agenda out. And he kept delaying and delaying and never answered. The planning commissioner's going, why aren't you answering my question? So there were things like this that made it look like the city planner was, you know, definitely favoring the church in this process. As a result of this, after all of this happened, the city council changed the laws, basically saying that if more than 20% of the people within 500ft of a new structure that's being proposed, if 20% oppose that structure, you then have to have a super majority in order to pass it. And they made longer time periods for it to get through. Trying to avoid. Exactly.
Radio Free Mormon [00:21:18] But I was going to say that, yeah, that clause in the contract about, you know, everybody hates you for being a good Mormon there, but if you, you have to run, then you can come work for me. That's the. Generally called the well done, thou good and faithful servant clause. That's what the Mormon call it in a contract.
Guest 3 [00:21:35] Yeah.
Rebecca Villateca [00:21:36] And we see this pretty much in Every city that we deal with, especially in Cody, our first experience, they said, well, you know, we're a church, they're a church. I'm sure that we can work this out. We're not a church, but we're God fearing people. We have our own denominations, you know, we can all work this out. And within a month or so they're saying, what is this? This seems like something else. Not a church, more like a corporation. And how they're being dealt with. So these kind of shenanigans behind the scenes. I think you'll see as we go along that we're seeing these in all cities in different forms, but sort of a similar playbook.
Rebecca Villateca [00:22:04] And one thing that most of the residents can't understand. What's the motivation? Is it financial? It's not financial. Why would the city planner be doing this? Why would he be, you know, manipulating things behind the scenes? And so we've tried to help people understand this idea that you give your time, your talents, your resources. It's not a financial benefit, it's. It's a promise that you've made. And we do try to help our residents understand that this is the motivation behind all of this mobilization.
Rebecca Villateca [00:22:32] Let's see if we can go to our next slide and get through some of these others. Again you'll start to see the parallels. So that's Cody. And again, final ruling is going to happen. We'll see. Either the temple starts being built or it's back to the drawing board where they will have to be working under those codes. The new codes past and Cody that Landon explained. So Heber Valley, Utah, everybody's lds.
Rebecca Villateca [00:22:53] Let's just exaggerate and say that. But as far as people on the committees and the councils and the commissions, I think the population is about 50, 50 LDS. Do you want to read the stats there on the temple?
John Dehlin [00:23:04] I do. It says 87,000 square feet, 216 foot high spire much, much higher than Cody, wyoming twice. Announced 3rd of October 2021.
Rebecca Villateca [00:23:16] Yeah, this is a monster. This is a gigantic temple and it's built on county land in the middle of the city. So all they had to do is go to the county and petition to get pretty much everything changed. Wouldn't you say, Landon? The lighting, the height requirements, Almost every single thing was changed not by a vote of the people, but simply by a vote of the county commission. Let's go to the next slide and we'll just talk about that for a minute before we talk about specifics of the. This is how large this is. The building on the right is the temple. Right next to it is a giant tabernacle that's in town. Then you see, I think a steak center and the teeny tiny little. Or is there a house? I'm sorry, I can't see the slides so closely here.
John Dehlin [00:24:00] Yeah, there's. There's a five foot seven person at the far left. Then to the right of that there is a compliant height restricted residential home at 35ft.
Heber Valley Temple Controversy and Dark Skies Lawsuit
Rebecca Villateca [00:24:11] Correct.
John Dehlin [00:24:11] Then there's the Heber City Town hall at 95ft. And to the right there's the Tucson Temple which is 38, 000 square feet in size. 70ft tall.
Radio Free Mormon [00:24:23] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:24:23] And then there's the Heber Valley Temple, 210ft tall.
Rebecca Villateca [00:24:28] That is monstrous massive, people. None of these residents understand how big these are at all. And as I said, the nothing this high had ever been allowed. There were dark skies ordinances. Everything was overturned like that by the county commission. And if you go to the next slide, we can talk about what it's like. Like we said, it's different in every town when you have a predominantly LDS political body there. So as you can see there, I think it's the slides. Sorry, it's a little turned from me, but I believe it's the. The groundbreaking. Yes, of the Heber Valley Temple. And you can see on the left there is President Nelson and Wendy with their golden shovels.
Rebecca Villateca [00:25:07] And standing right next to them is a member of the county commission. This person that's going to make these decisions for all residents, LDs and not LDs, on whether or not the temple should be built and you know, what codes and ordinances should be followed. The other picture is somebody else. He's a. I have it written there in the slide. I'm so sorry, I'm so far away from the slide. But he, I believe is a planning manager.
Rebecca Villateca [00:25:30] He's the director. So again there are LDS members that are in key positions that you know, can help the temple move through. Now our next slide I thought was very interesting. Of course some residents started mobilize. We were contacted by them. There were two lawsuits that were filed. One was a dark sky save our wasatch back because they changed the dark skies ordinance. They've been in place for 20 years and they changed them instantly. Of course they didn't say they did it for the temple, but it just seems like so much of a coincidence. And then there's another lawsuit just from some residents that are there.
Rebecca Villateca [00:26:05] So this is our friend who was a member of the dark skies lawsuit. That lawsuit has since been dropped because again, money. Right. You're fighting the church and you're just a resident. So we're only going to play part of this. But she went before a.
Rebecca Villateca [00:26:18] I think it was the county Commission meeting to try to talk about dark skies. And I just want everybody to hear what happens when a resident addresses a predominantly LDS council. So we'll just play it up to a certain point, I think maybe like a minute and a half, and then I'll say stop. But to me, this is very important.
John Dehlin [00:26:37] All right, let's roll the tape.
▶ Video Clip 1Video Clip 1 [00:26:47] Yeah, that was a great discussion at the end. We missed the interlocal. We didn't catch that it was on the agenda. But we have gone back and watched it and really appreciate the discussion that took place with Heber and Midway as well.
Video Clip 1 [00:27:10] Yeah.
Video Clip 1 [00:27:11] So. And I know there's a meeting with. For Mida tomorrow as well, so we're going to come there as well because supposedly they've adopted some type of dark sky ordinance as well. So we want to understand that better because we're really interested in the whole Wasatch back area.
Video Clip 1 [00:27:30] Let me say this. We talk to a lot of people all over the Valley and we interact with a lot of people all over the Valley. And mostly what we've heard is it doesn't matter. They're not going to listen. They've never listened. They won't engage. And I don't believe that's true. And I can't believe that's true. We also get accused of being religious bigots and only caring about the temple. And I'm telling you that's not true. And everywhere we go, we say the same thing. So I want to read something very quickly. Russell Nelson, president of the Church of Latter Day Saints, spoke in February about the need for members of the church to be peacemakers. He explained that now is the time to cease insisting that it is your
Video Clip 1 [00:28:19] way or no way.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:20] He challenged followers of the faith to examine their discipleship within the context of the way you treat others. I bless you to make your adjustments that may be needed so that your behavior is enabling, respectful and representative of true followers of Jesus Christ.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:40] It's not the Church of Latter Day
Video Clip 1 [00:28:42] Saints, it's the Church. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Just to make sure that's clear.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:47] It's clear.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:48] Thank you.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:49] I was reading how it was written.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:50] My apologies.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:51] So what's the point of that comment?
Video Clip 1 [00:28:53] The point of that is.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:55] I mean, are you saying we're not.
Video Clip 1 [00:28:57] No, my. The point of that is we're Trying to outreach to the community.
Video Clip 1 [00:29:01] That's probably enough, I think, that there
Video Clip 1 [00:29:03] are concerns and our thoughts.
Rebecca Villateca [00:29:05] Yep, a resident, very prepared. She's got all her stats there. She wants to address the council. She reads something from President Nelson asking that we all please get along. And the first words out of the council's mouth is, it's not the church. I mean, this is just par for the course. But I thought that was a great example.
John Dehlin [00:29:24] But what? You know, you missed the most important part of that meeting.
Rebecca Villateca [00:29:26] Well, I did. I didn't want to go into that. But it's true. She was almost not allowed to speak because she had gone on more podcasts.
John Dehlin [00:29:34] You guys are celebrities.
Rebecca Villateca [00:29:35] We are celebrities. And of course, she said no one else in this area would cover anything about what their group was trying to do. She could get no other media access except for us. We'll take anybody.
Landon [00:29:45] You gotta be pretty deaf. Desperate to go on.
Rebecca Villateca [00:29:47] You got to be pretty desperate to go on. Mormon or something.
John Dehlin [00:29:49] Y' all are taking over the Mormon Internet.
Rebecca Villateca [00:29:51] That's exactly right. So Hebrew was interesting. Again, so many LDS members that they were able to call on to come out and support, you know, in droves at all of these meetings. And we have a clip here by from Nemo showing a really interesting scenario that happened when they were trying to get a big crowd, a big important visual moment for one of the votes at the city council or the county council.
Youth Protest and Community Opposition in Heber City
John Dehlin [00:30:16] All right, let's roll the clip with Nemo.
▶ Video Clip 2Video Clip 2 [00:30:19] Do you remember when Neil L. Anderson said this?
Video Clip 2 [00:30:22] In Heber City, Utah, a public meeting was held to discuss the details of
Video Clip 2 [00:30:27] a temple planned for construction. 300 youth filled the adjoining park to
Video Clip 2 [00:30:33] show their support for the proposed temple.
Video Clip 2 [00:30:35] They might have also been showing their support for ice cream because those youth didn't just turn up of their own accord. Their presence was a coordinated event organized by the church and which included ice cream and food trucks for the youth. John 6:26 comes to mind. Ye seek me not because you saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled as always. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Rebecca Villateca [00:30:59] So, again, this is just one of those examples of getting the people out in numbers en masse. You know, they were able to send out coordinated emails with a touch of a button, an award, or a stake that reach hundreds, if not thousands of people. And in this case, they actually told the youth in all the youth organizations, come to the city building. We're going to have food trucks with ice cream and pizza and treats. They showed up of course, it's an amazing photo moment. Right. All the support of the youth for the temple and then it was used in conference, conveniently leaving out that there were food trucks. So let's see what we have next for Heber.
John Dehlin [00:31:30] All right, so we'll go to Heber.
Rebecca Villateca [00:31:33] Heber. There we go.
John Dehlin [00:31:34] That's an article.
Guest 7 [00:31:35] That's.
John Dehlin [00:31:35] It's from kcpw, which says with new Smith's Marketplace on the horizon, city council says no to 20 foot sign.
Rebecca Villateca [00:31:45] Yeah, we thought this was just really funny because after everything Heber went through and it is a massive temple with so many problems. Do you want to talk about the problems really quickly, Landon? Just very quickly rattle them off.
Landon [00:31:55] Yeah, there were, there were quite a few. One was the height. It's right in the path of the airport. So it's going to have to have some beacon lights on it. The water problems, they're pumping out like a million gallons a day because the water table's so high there. And so the lighting was a big issue. As Rebecca said, they completely changed the night sky. And this temple was so tall that it was not going to pass under conditional use permit. So what the county did, not only they changed the lighting, but they introduced what's called an lda, a legislative development area which allowed them to just bypass every law.
Rebecca Villateca [00:32:33] Right.
Landon [00:32:34] And it got completely passed by every county commissioner, approved it. And now it's coming back to bite him in the butt because now other developers are saying, wait a minute, you gave them the lda. Now we should be able to use the same and we should be able to build big buildings. And there's a golf course coming in that wants to build a 70 foot clubhouse there. So yeah, yeah, they definitely, conveniently they keep saying we didn't change these for the church. But you, you, anyone could see what was happening here when everything got changed for this one building.
Rebecca Villateca [00:33:06] And that's why this slide is so funny, because just recently, after all this has been happening over the last year and a half, they're up in arms and arguing over a 20 foot sign. Yet they pass with a snap of a finger that height 200 and was it 16? Oh, my goodness, I lose track of these heights of these steeples. So Heber, I'll tell you where they are right now. As I said, our friends lawsuit, the dark skies lawsuit, they had to drop that because again, self funded. And Heber City now, of course there are is a resident group suing the city of Heber. Well, the church has just joined as a defendant in that lawsuit.
Rebecca Villateca [00:33:43] Maybe rfm. You can explain what that means or what the motivation might be then, for a church and the city to join together against just a residence group, just regular people trying to defend, you know, their land. I guess
Guest 8 [00:33:58] we've.
John Dehlin [00:33:58] We've been able to render RFM silence.
Rebecca Villateca [00:34:01] Oh, he's not going to say a word.
Radio Free Mormon [00:34:02] No, I. I was waiting to see if you wanted to follow up on that, John. No, no, no, because I know that we've got just a few minutes before that meeting in McKinney.
John Dehlin [00:34:10] I think we have got 30 minutes.
Rebecca Villateca [00:34:11] I think we have 30 minutes, 6, 45, that we're shooting for. That's why I'm talking so dang fast.
John Dehlin [00:34:16] We're making good progress.
Rebecca Villateca [00:34:17] I think we're doing it.
Radio Free Mormon [00:34:18] Yeah. It's very common.
John Dehlin [00:34:19] It's very common.
Radio Free Mormon [00:34:20] A person or group or company can enter into a lawsuit if they. What is it? They convince the judge that they. Their interests are similar to either the defense in this case, the defendant, or the prosecution. That's an amicus curie. So a friend of the court. You're. You're not actually being personally on the block, but you have interests that are going to be affected by the decision that's going to be made in this case.
Landon [00:34:47] Can I make a comment on that, please? What that does is what the precedence that they set there is. If you're a small town planning commission or city council and you're being told you're going to get sued, and then the citizens group who, you know is doing a GoFundMe account might have $8,000 tells you they're going to sue you, which way are you going to sway? You're going to say, oh, the church is going to basically cover my costs to defend this. If, If I vote in their favor, if I vote against them, the city's going to have to pay millions of dollars in the lawsuit. So it really. It really puts the citizens at a disadvantage because the council is going to play it safe and vote with the. With the church having them cover the cost of the lawsuit as opposed to them having to decide.
Rebecca Villateca [00:35:37] Yep, that's absolutely correct. The citizens almost don't stand a chance because, like you said, they're just raising their own money and crowdsourcing it, crowdfunding it. So. And again, I should say to everybody listening or watching that, you know, this is a much bigger story. You can Google all. You know, there are newspaper articles everywhere about each of these towns. People have podcasted about it. Mormonish has done that. So it's a much bigger story. We're just kind of trying to give an overview. So I think we're moving on to Lone Mountains, and I think people are
John Dehlin [00:36:02] saying the glitchiness has gone away. So it was worth. It was worth doing.
Rebecca Villateca [00:36:05] Somebody did some kind of a, you know. All right, that's right.
John Dehlin [00:36:09] Was that Wayne's World reference you just did?
Rebecca Villateca [00:36:11] Yeah, like a Bewitched or something.
John Dehlin [00:36:15] All right, Rebecca.
Lone Mountain, Nevada Temple Proposal
Rebecca Villateca [00:36:16] Okay, Lone Mountain, we're speeding ahead. Here we go. Lone Mountain, Nevada, with the Las Vegas Planning Commission. And this is where things really started to heat up. Heber and Cody, I refer to as the OG Temples, Right? They've been going on for about a year and a half. These are new. These are hot. These are. Right now. These are real time. Would you like to read the stats on. This is another monster. Yeah, I know I have reading glasses on my head, but I don't think even those will help.
John Dehlin [00:36:39] All right, so Lone Mountain, Nevada Temple. Let's get ready to rumble. Sorry, that was a joke. Okay. 70,000 square foot, 215 foot high spire. So is it one foot shorter than Heber? Is that.
Rebecca Villateca [00:36:54] Yes, barely. They're about the same size. Although the double spire in Heber and the single spire here.
John Dehlin [00:36:58] And then it's announced October 2, 2022.
Rebecca Villateca [00:37:02] So again, if you go to our first slide, the first thing, the residents, they know nothing about this. Although while they were sleeping, it's going
John Dehlin [00:37:08] to read this or what should we do?
Rebecca Villateca [00:37:09] Who's in Whoville? No, Can I see what the slide is? And then I can.
John Dehlin [00:37:11] It says neighborhood meeting. It's a little invitation.
Rebecca Villateca [00:37:15] Yeah, exactly. What I was going to say is before people receive this flyer here on their door or in their mailbox that says, hey, temples, come into your town. Come to this meeting. There are a lot of things happening behind the scenes and especially here in Lone Mountain, a lot of things while the residents are peace. So the first thing they found out is a temple's coming to your town. This is exactly what happens. And they're invited to a meeting. So we can go to the next slide. It's just general. It'll be at this time.
John Dehlin [00:37:39] Okay, this one is a big letter. And then I actually did a close up to read it. Exactly what is this email?
Rebecca Villateca [00:37:44] So, you know, the residents are like, well, this seems okay. Until they went to the meeting, you know, and it's usually the church's law firm. In this case it was. And some representatives from the church. The meeting was held at a church building and they kind of got an idea of, oh, my goodness, what is this what's happening? And so one of the residents that we've been working with wrote this letter to the city council. And I will tell you that we. It's so interesting. They kind of googled an LDS temple is coming to our neighborhood, and they came across a lot of the things that we podcasted about.
Rebecca Villateca [00:38:13] They contacted some of the other residents in Heber and Cody, and they were able to mobilize extremely quickly. So the first thing that they thought of is, hmm, what might influence our city council. Now, in Cody, there were some LDS members there perhaps, you know, manipulating it. We don't know for sure. In Heber, there were many members that were LDs, perhaps that had sort of an effect on the outcome. So what could influence this city council?
Rebecca Villateca [00:38:39] There were no LDS members. And our residents thought, well, I wonder if, I don't know, could something monetary be an influence? So maybe you can read that one paragraph that they wrote to the city council, just asking some questions they had about the temple, some things about things they. I didn't quite think were maybe ethical or just they were irregular in what was happening in Las Vegas.
John Dehlin [00:39:04] All right, I'll read it now.
Rebecca Villateca [00:39:06] So, yeah, just that highlighted. You can put that up. It's a great letter.
John Dehlin [00:39:10] So this is. The letter is dear Councilwoman Allen Polinsky.
Rebecca Villateca [00:39:15] Yeah.
Landon [00:39:15] And she is the council person for the ward that the. They're called wards, but civic wards. And she's the councilwoman for the ward, the war where the temple is going to be built.
John Dehlin [00:39:27] Okay, so I'll read the excerpt from that. And it says, also of note is the fact that you have accepted.
Guest 8 [00:39:35] Whoa.
John Dehlin [00:39:35] $10,000 in contributions from the law firm Camper Crowell that is representing the developer. These donations occurred the same year the property was acquired by the developer. 25,000 on 6 4, 6 1, 4, 20 22. 3,000 on 9. 9, 20 22, and 4, 500 on 12 2, 20 22. Along those same lines, it appears Councilman Knudsen, or Knudsen, Councilwoman Seaman, Councilwoman Diaz, and Councilman Creer have all accepted contributions totaling 60,000 from the previous mentioned law firm. In total, the council has received. Received 70,000 from the single law firm. 40,000 of that occurring either right before the land purchase or right after. That just seems like graft or payola or something.
Rebecca Villateca [00:40:32] What is that again? We'll ask rfm, because this is what the residents and. And the law firm they mentioned, the developer is the church. This is the church's law firm. So RFM, I thought the church's law
John Dehlin [00:40:42] firm was Kurt McCook.
Rebecca Villateca [00:40:43] Well, when they go into individual cities, they usually will hire someone there to try to work with the residents. And somebody perhaps that's an expert in real estate law. We saw that in Cody, I think. So maybe we ask rfm not illegal, unethical. I mean, how do we look? How do we spin that? The residents were definitely concerned.
Radio Free Mormon [00:41:03] I would be concerned too, unfortunately. This just brings into sharp focus what this country deals with on a regular basis, which is lobbying and. Or are giving perfectly legal campaign contributions up to the maximum allowed by law, $10,000 a year, I think, in Las Vegas. And then these are the same attorneys who are coming in and lobbying for the church and getting the zones, the zoning standards changed so that the temple can go in. Yeah, it's wrong. It's wrong. Even I can tell that Radio Free Mormon, his standards are so low. But even I can tell that's wrong.
Rebecca Villateca [00:41:42] Wow, that's big. That if even RFM has a problem with this. But again, and we can't go into all the details, but so many things behind the scenes as far as codes being changed. And if we go to our next slide, I think that details more of the campaign contributions.
John Dehlin [00:41:55] These are impossible to read.
Rebecca Villateca [00:41:56] No, we're not going to read it. It just shows. Well, no, it just shows that. And these are all public records. This is all completely searchable public records. It just shows, you know, like RFM said, there's a certain cap on contributions, but these were made to key people. Did this have anything to do with the. That some of the zoning was changed well in advance? We don't really know. We don't know. We're just kind of throwing that out there. So.
Guest 9 [00:42:18] But it's.
John Dehlin [00:42:19] It suggests that the Mormon Church is having its law firm donate money to city councils to influence their votes.
Rebecca Villateca [00:42:25] That could be how it appears.
Radio Free Mormon [00:42:27] The suggestion, which we will not know unless there's a lawsuit, which I'm not planning on filing, and getting the discovery as to the bank accounts of this law firm is whether money went into their trust account from the church before it went out of their trust account to the campaign funds for these city council people.
Guest 3 [00:42:45] Right.
Rebecca Villateca [00:42:45] And they had never donated before to these individuals, Isn't that correct, Landon?
Landon [00:42:49] Well, they'd made donations in 2016, 2017, 2018. It looked like almost whenever they had a big development going in that they were representative, all of a sudden donations started going out. But they hadn't really donated to these candidates until the 2020, I think end of 2021, then 2022, and 20.
Rebecca Villateca [00:43:10] And again, you have to realize these temples are announced and it's maybe three, four years before any action is seen on the ground. But what we're finding and what we're calling the playbook is a lot of things are happening behind the scenes. A lot.
Landon [00:43:23] This one had a lot of changes in it. The residents really felt safe because they had an interlocal agreement with the county that said that the land could not be changed from residential. It could not be changed. They changed it to Civic. But even if it was changed to Civic, the Civic only allowed churches to build on smaller than five acres. Well, guess what happened just two months before the church went in. The city of Las Vegas changed the zoning codes to redefine a civic zone so that churches could build on land over five acres, letting them then slip right in. And as soon as they rezoned it, and then they made the argument that the interlocal agreement with the county didn't address civic zoning. And therefore, by ignoring it, that meant they could do it. And they went ahead and rezoned it to Civic so that they could build this monster in a neighborhood.
Rebecca Villateca [00:44:16] Yeah. And most of it, all of it happening before, a resident would never know. Why would you think to look at your codes? Or if they were changing, why would you think it had anything to do with a church that you've probably never heard of? So let's go to our next slide really quick. I think we're finishing up. There's a really good clip coming up. I think. I can't see from the side. I'm sorry.
Church Mobilization and the Las Vegas City Council Meeting
John Dehlin [00:44:31] Las Vegas, Nevada, Sky Canyon Stake. So this is a memo from the church?
Rebecca Villateca [00:44:36] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:44:37] To the Las Vegas, Nevada.
Rebecca Villateca [00:44:39] That's right.
John Dehlin [00:44:40] Canyon Steak. I could read it or you could.
Rebecca Villateca [00:44:42] No, I think we'll just paraphrase. Because what we want to show here is that as they're preparing for this planning and zoning meeting, typically things go to planning zoning first. Who vote on a recommendation, yes or no. They started to mobilize. This is where you see the power of the LDS people to be able to mobilize like crazy. They send a letter out, they tell them that there's going to be a meeting. They want everyone to show up. They want them to wear blue shirts, and they want them to be peacemakers. We do have a video that was also put out asking for support. I think that might be next, if we can look at that. Sorry, I'm not in the silent slides.
John Dehlin [00:45:13] I know, I'm sorry. I'm trying to juggle too many.
Landon [00:45:16] This is actually the permit that they. That they filed for the. With the county. And notice in the bottom there, it says, do any city council people have a financial stake in this property? And it's being filed by the developer, the law firm, who has made the contributions. But since they don't own the land, it's not a guess of financial. Even though they received a $10,000 donation from the law firm that's filing the permit.
Rebecca Villateca [00:45:45] So much wiggle room. But, yeah. So this is all going on ahead of time. And now we know the planning zoning meeting is coming up. And so then there's another flyer that goes out that says, please show up. Wear your blue shirt.
John Dehlin [00:45:57] Yeah, it's time to stand for the Lone Mountain Temple.
Guest 10 [00:46:00] Yep.
John Dehlin [00:46:01] Says Tuesday, May 14, 6pm City of Las Vegas Planning Commission meeting. You know, gives the address and it says, we need you. Please come and stand together and support. Wear a navy blue shirt, but please avoid. Avoid logo. I wonder why. Why they don't want their blue shirts to have logos.
Rebecca Villateca [00:46:26] That is a good question. And I think we have a video
John Dehlin [00:46:28] now that was a reference to BYU Blue. And they probably don't want it to look like a bunch of Mormon. Well, are swarming the city council. Is that.
Rebecca Villateca [00:46:35] Well, but if you read what they want, if you read one part there,
John Dehlin [00:46:38] it says people to think that Mormon,
Landon [00:46:40] they're going to take video and send it in to show how many thousands of people are there to support the.
Rebecca Villateca [00:46:46] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:46:47] Not BYU Mormon. They wanted to be citizens, not Mormon. Or am I wrong?
Rebecca Villateca [00:46:51] Right. Well, no, they want to show you that the LDS want their temple. It's the same theory behind the ice cream trucks and in McKinney that we're going to see tonight, they've asked them to wear white shirts to the plaza. So I think next is a video where they're also asking people to come. It'll kind of give you an idea. And this is when our residents first started to realize, oh, my gosh, look how they can mobilize. This is overwhelming. Most regular people don't understand the LDS ability to mobilize like this. That's. And it's pretty overwhelming, especially when you mix that with a political process where everyone's supposed to be represented. So hopefully we can play this.
John Dehlin [00:47:26] All right, here's the clip.
▶ Video Clip 3Video Clip 3 [00:47:28] Members of the LDS Church who support the Lone Mountain Temple are rallying to show that support publicly.
Video Clip 3 [00:47:33] I'm excited to invite you to come and stand for the temple. Approvals needed for the Lone Mountain Temple proposed by the Church of Jesus Christ
Video Clip 3 [00:47:42] of Latter Day Saints.
Video Clip 3 [00:47:42] Saints will be considered at the Las Vegas City Planning commission meeting at 6pm on Tuesday, May 14 at the Las Vegas City Hall. Planning Commission members expect to hear both concerns and support for the temple. Let's pack the plaza at City hall with supporters of the Lone Mountain Temple beyond the Plaza by 6pm and to wear navy blue to show your support. Please avoid logos if possible. Be sure to allow extra time for traffic and to find parking so you can be there when it matters. So come stand for the temple while we're there. Let's be peacemakers on the plaza.
Video Clip 3 [00:48:20] The clip speaks for itself, but please share your thoughts in the comments.
John Dehlin [00:48:23] Thank you. Nemo, you're a legend. All right.
Rebecca Villateca [00:48:27] I know. Sorry. We were getting some real time in intel from the ground there, so. So, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:48:32] So you have people on the ground.
Rebecca Villateca [00:48:34] I, you know, I do have people on the ground. I never thought I would, but I do. It's amazing. So, yeah, you can see there that they definitely were just mobilizing people. I have some pictures there that are shown now of what happened. Boy, those blue shirts really did storm that city council meeting.
John Dehlin [00:48:49] For those who are listening only, there's four pictures and it's just a bunch of people with blue shirts. Like. Yeah, I mean, people never. Mormon probably don't know that the Mormon Church played an important role in settling Las Vegas.
Rebecca Villateca [00:49:02] Yeah, absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:49:03] And it's, it's got to be the dominant religion. Maybe not 50%, but certainly a plurality.
Guest 8 [00:49:09] Right?
Rebecca Villateca [00:49:09] Exactly.
Landon [00:49:10] I think they said it. Was it 11 or three. It's, it's, it's a big, you know, it's a big part of the population, but it's by no means a majority of the population.
John Dehlin [00:49:18] Right, right, right. Okay.
Rebecca Villateca [00:49:19] Exactly. Sorry.
John Dehlin [00:49:21] No, no, no, it's fine.
Rebecca Villateca [00:49:22] And so if we go to our next slide really quickly, because I know we're getting short on time here. This is a picture of inside of the Lone Mountain or the Las Vegas. I don't, I think they had to move it to a larger venue, but you can see the people. And it was several hours of residents standing up. We do have many clips, but I don't think we're going to be able to play them up front. We might on the other side of the meeting. I think it will take too long. But basically, if I can paraphrase, the LDS members stood up and, you know, just bore their testimonies about the temple and how much it meant.
Rebecca Villateca [00:49:53] The residents stood up and talked about zoning codes and laws and perhaps, you know, some wonky Behavior behind the scenes. And it was just really interesting to see this just juxtaposition. And I know tonight that we're going to be showing the McKinney meeting probably in just a few minutes. I think we're going to have to go over there, and so we're not going to have a chance, I think, to talk about McKinney. Exactly. But we do want to mention one really important thing about McKinney, and this is something that showed up there that we've never seen before. There is a law called rlua, Religious Land Use and Incarcerated Persons Law.
Rebecca Villateca [00:50:27] And the church uses this. It's supposed to be a shield to protect religious groups. Like, if you want to build a mosque in a town and a town has a prejudice, this law would protect so that the town couldn't vote that down based on prejudice, prejudicial behavior. Well, the church, unfortunately, uses this law as a sword, and it says we can build what we want, where we want to build it, and we want to build these incredibly high buildings. Well, they tried to say this in Cody, and Cody said, well, you have other buildings that aren't very tall. Can you show us in your doctrine or in your dogma, where it talks about a steeple being an essential part of your worship?
Rebecca Villateca [00:51:06] And they couldn't really. So in McKinney, we see letters show up. And since I can't see the slides very well, I don't know if we can get right to it.
John Dehlin [00:51:13] So we're on the McKinney.
Rebecca Villateca [00:51:15] We're just going to preface it. Yeah, right. Before we get there. Yeah, really fast.
John Dehlin [00:51:19] Okay, Here's a photo. McKinney, Texas Temple. 43,000 square feet, 173 foot tall. Spiral.
Rebecca Villateca [00:51:26] Yep. Okay, so there's a letter that comes out. That's not that one. Sorry. Okay, so we're probably going to have to speed through since we can get there. There's a letter that asks people to write into the City Council and to especially say, yes, how important the height of the steeple is. And this just takes on a life of its own. In the planning and Zoning board meeting, which we viewed of the. Of the Fairview Council, they talked, the LDS members talked over and over about how important the height was, how important the light was, how important the walls were. It's really just taken on a life of his own, wouldn't you say, Landon?
Landon [00:52:04] Yeah. And they also did that in Las Vegas. The lawyer actually read something that talked about how tall the Celestial Room ceiling was, how thick the walls were. Any architectural element.
John Dehlin [00:52:19] I'm getting a report that they're doing a greenhouse first.
Rebecca Villateca [00:52:22] Yeah, we have a little bit of time. Yeah. And I was told it was going to be about 6:45. So the point of this is that they're asking residents, they're asking LDS members to sort of make this up. Now I have six decades in the church almost and I've never heard anything about the steeple height being in being the most important part about going to the temple. But as I said, this has taken on a life of its own. And we have seen members get up at these meetings and bear their testimonies of the height of the steeple. It is the most important thing. It is absolutely essential. And again, the reason they're saying this and maybe now we can have RFM explain just for a second RLUIPA and why they have to say the steeple is so high. Now that I've kind of prefaced it a little bit.
RLUIPA Law and Church Legal Strategy
Radio Free Mormon [00:53:06] Well, I think you said it all actually.
Rebecca Villateca [00:53:08] Do you think I did?
Guest 6 [00:53:09] I think you did.
Rebecca Villateca [00:53:09] I'm talking so fast.
Radio Free Mormon [00:53:10] No, no, no, you covered it really, really well. The whole idea is that our lupa, if there is a facet of your worship service or your architecture which you say is part of your religious practice or religious observance, then it is in like Flynn and nobody can gain say.
Radio Free Mormon [00:53:27] And that's why the stake president and the area authorities are sending out these blanket emails to all the members of the church in the area and not even in the area telling them they need to email and show up and talk about the temple. But the key words they need to remember are the spire. The spire is so important to our temple worship because it points right up there, right at God. And if you look beyond it far enough, you'll see God. It points up to the sky, which is where God lives, I think.
Radio Free Mormon [00:53:59] And that's it. And now they're doing the walls. And this is something that is astonishing to me that first off, it's a big fat lie. Everybody knows it's a lie because everybody who's been a member of the church for as long as we have knows that there has never, never been any statement by any authority ever that the spire of the temple is an integral part of the worship. And in fact what you've managed to find or other people that you have on the ground or elsewhere have found for you are two other clips, one by Elder Bednar and one by President Nelson, saying exactly the opposite.
Radio Free Mormon [00:54:33] So what they're saying is we want to build this temple so big and so bad. And we know that you get on the covenant path in that temple by making those covenants and keeping those covenants. That's okay. I mean, in general conference, you can't hear a speaker say two words together without one of them being covenant and the other one being path. That's how much covenant path is talked about. But one of the covenants you got to make in the temple and in order to get in the temple is to be honest in your dealings with your fellow human beings. It's pretty basic. It's honesty.
Radio Free Mormon [00:55:03] So what the church is now doing is telling its members and encouraging its members is to be dishonest. In other words, to break covenants, temple covenants, so that you can build a super big temple so you can go in there and make more covenants, which presumably you will break as soon as a church leader tells you to.
Landon [00:55:22] I think one thing we've failed to mention is the reason that they're having to do this is because they're building in residentially zoned areas, which limits a ceiling, a roof height to 30ft. And they're building these things to 200ft.
Guest [00:55:35] Feet.
Landon [00:55:35] So these are towering way over every building around it, which is why the residents are so upset. And rfm, you didn't mention how Rlupi came about.
Radio Free Mormon [00:55:46] Oh, the Boston Temple. Go ahead.
Landon [00:55:47] The Boston Temple. Thirty years ago, the Boston Temple was built. The people complained about the height of the steeple. It ended up getting built without the steeple throughout the law process. They eventually won and have now put a steeple on top of it.
Guest 13 [00:56:03] It.
Landon [00:56:03] But as a result of that, a law was introduced. The Rlupi law to. To. It was introduced by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.
Guest 5 [00:56:13] Yes.
Landon [00:56:13] And also co sponsored by Senator Bennett and Senator Smith From Oregon, all three LDs who then went to other religious senators and they passed this Rlupi law that basically now they use to give them unfettered, that they can ignore every local zoning law that they want. And that's not really the case. Rlupi doesn't say you get to just carte blanc ignore the zoning laws, but you have to prove that it's an integral part of your worship. And that's why they're emphasizing the steeple, is because they're trying to say this is an integral part of our temple worship.
Bednar Clip and Temple Spire Justifications
John Dehlin [00:56:51] And Rebecca, I know you want to show the clip with Bednar, but I also think it's just important to show how many Mormon temples do not have.
Guest 4 [00:56:58] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:56:59] So if we go to the slide, let's list them All Paris, France, no steeple. Meridian, Idaho. Mesa, Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. Hong Kong, China. Lima, Peru. Los Olive, Olivos, Singapore Temple Anchorage, Alaska. Temple Cardston, Alberta. Temple Lei, Hawaii. Temple Bello Horizonte, Brazil. Temple. Like lots of temples without spires, right?
Guest 8 [00:57:26] Exactly.
Rebecca Villateca [00:57:26] And the Hong Kong one that you just showed, it had a spire, and in the renovation just a few years ago, they took the spire off. So I feel this has even got to make faithful LDS go. Gosh, wait a minute. I have never heard anything about this, and now I'm being asked to say something about this.
John Dehlin [00:57:42] And Maven's telling us that the council has started. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna jump to the council meeting.
Guest 5 [00:57:49] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:57:49] Is that what you want?
Rebecca Villateca [00:57:50] We need to do it. I wish we could play this clip first, though, because I think we should.
Radio Free Mormon [00:57:54] It's.
Landon [00:57:56] Yeah, it's only a minute or two,
Rebecca Villateca [00:57:57] because this, to me, is the smoking gun of the doctrine of the steeple.
John Dehlin [00:58:02] David Bednar. David Bed. Our Mormon apostle.
Guest 13 [00:58:04] Yep.
Rebecca Villateca [00:58:05] And President Nelson. I hear people, oh, that's a small temple. There's no such thing as a small temple. They're just temples. There's no such thing as small covenants or small ordinances.
Guest 4 [00:58:19] And see, the.
Rebecca Villateca [00:58:20] That, that to me, reflects this fixation on.
Guest 4 [00:58:23] It's the building. Who cares what the size is?
Rebecca Villateca [00:58:27] If you have access to the same covenants and ordinances whereby we have a covenant connection with the Father and the Son. We're so blessed to have temples. We'll have increasing numbers of temples as the church grows. But it's not the number and it's not the location.
Landon [00:58:47] It's not the architecture.
Rebecca Villateca [00:58:50] It's the ordinances inside. Who cares what the size is? Who cares? It's not the architecture. It's the ordinances inside. It's the ordinances inside.
Guest 8 [00:59:06] It's the ordinances inside.
John Dehlin [00:59:11] You heard it from a Mormon. And profit. Size doesn't matter. Architecture doesn't matter. Ordinances matter. And thank you to the Cultural hall for making that possible. All right, now we're going to go ahead.
Radio Free Mormon [00:59:22] Who did that music anyway? It sounds like we are the World.
Rebecca Villateca [00:59:25] You know, those were from the original videos, but again, I woke up this morning with that idea. I contacted Cultural Hall. He's amazing. His content's incredible. And he put that together, which, to me, it just shows it right there. The prophet and the apostles said that doesn't matter is what happens inside. But we hear it all the meetings, and we're probably going to hear here tonight how important the height is.
Fairview, Pennsylvania Temple Public Hearing Begins
John Dehlin [00:59:43] All Right. So we're going to actually switch now to the city council.
Guest 4 [00:59:49] Know what we're here for.
Guest 14 [00:59:49] I do want to.
John Dehlin [00:59:50] Then we will switch back and finish commentary.
▶ Video Clip 4Video Clip 4 [00:59:52] Comments that I've received. So in the packet, you know, we have at least. The packet says a lot over 1100. We're now easily over what I've been able to process. Let me be clear what I've been able to process.
Video Clip 4 [01:00:07] The current numbers are about 1250 total. 425 of those are Fairview residents. 51 are in support. 374, 75 are in opposition. That does not include a petition that we gave you all access to through that Dropbox with over 1160 names on it.
Video Clip 4 [01:00:27] Of the remaining 800ish, all of those are from folks outside of the town of Fairview. 695, 700 of those are in support. 126 are in opposition. Now, what's not included in There is the 13,500 email that I've received since we issued the packet on Friday.
Video Clip 4 [01:00:49] If I've had to clarify those or generalize those, I would say that a vast majority of those are supportive emails that are not Fairview residents. So again, I'm sure there's questions. There's a lot of folks that want to speak, so I'm going to end it there. That PNC did recommend full denial. So in case this means that we'll need at least 75% of the council to approve anything, which unfortunately needs six.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:20] Okay.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:20] Thank you, Israel. So moving along, we would have the applicant. Just someone from the applicant, Richard, up and speak.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:31] Good evening, Mayor and City Council.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:33] My name is Richard Abernathy. 1700 Red Bud McKinney, Texas.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:37] On behalf of the applicant, we are
Video Clip 4 [01:01:39] seeking a continuance until August 2024.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:43] Meeting of both the.
Video Clip 4 [01:01:45] The application and also either a continuation or a renewal of the public hearing. And based on that, we're prepared to ask people who've come and supported that we know, to limit their comments and give very few comments if any, tonight so that we'd have an opportunity, if necessary, in August.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:06] Okay.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:07] Did you.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:08] Did you want to tell people why you wanted a continuance?
Video Clip 4 [01:02:11] Yes, we would like a continuance so that we could continue a conversation we started today. We're looking towards attempting to find solutions
Video Clip 4 [01:02:21] to issues that the town has. And we're preparing to make some concessions
Video Clip 4 [01:02:27] and have more conversation with y'.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:29] All.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:30] I think we had a wonderful conversation today with Mr. Hub, Dr. Hubbard and the mayor. I thought it was a productive meeting. We Were encouraged by it. We look forward to coming back before the August meeting with more conversation and more possible offers. So that's our request. We would like to find a solution to the issue and we want to work with the town to get that.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:58] Thank you, Richard.
Video Clip 4 [01:02:59] Yes, sir.
Video Clip 4 [01:03:01] So just for everybody's benefit, what, what has been going on? Earlier today we had a meeting with these gentlemen sitting over here, any of them from Salt Lake City. And we talked about what might be acceptable to the town without committing any one way or they haven't committed either. But.
Guest 4 [01:03:24] So we have suggested that we have two other churches in that area and those two churches, one of which is an LDS meeting house, that the spire heights be capped at 68ft and that the top of the building be 42ft, 42% impervious coverage. And then the lighting, we would have to have a conversation about after we see what they might come back with. They haven't committed to make changes, but they're going to go back and try to see if they can figure out a way to fit it into our parameters. So we appreciate that conversation we had today.
▶ Video Clip 5Video Clip 5 [01:04:07] So, as Israel alluded to a little bit ago, tonight we have only five of us up here. Two of our council members are out of the country, long planned vacations. So out of tonight we are able to. Basically there's actually four. But generally we, we can take two options. We can take take two actions.
Video Clip 5 [01:04:32] As we go through this hearing, we're going to give people a chance to talk and I'll explain how that'll work. But our actions by the council tonight, we could go like the Planning and Zoning Committee did. We could deny it outright, with or without prejudice. That's technicality there. Or we could open the public hearing and we can let some folks speak about. Because I know there's people here come from a long way away and other peoples that have spent a lot of time preparing for this. And we're gonna, we're gonna let some people speak, but at some point we're going to move towards. I'll ask for a motion from the council to continue the meeting.
Video Clip 5 [01:05:14] What that means is if you don't get a chance tonight to speak, you're. You can come back in August. We will do this again in August, probably at the same place. And we'll give folks a chance to. Who don't get the chance to speak tonight to speak in August.
Video Clip 5 [01:05:30] I don't know how we identify one versus the other. We've never had this kind of crowd to deal with before. So we're kind of making this up as we go along. So let me see what else. So anyway, so I'm going to first ask the council, do you have any comments or anything? We had the applicant come up and ask for continuation.
Video Clip 5 [01:05:57] If there's any conversation you want to have about anything in detail that might be associated with this application or we just go right to the public hearing. You okay with that? All right, so what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to open the public hearing as we have names and I will call people up.
Video Clip 5 [01:06:19] If you were at the PNZ meeting, you saw we had rushed to the microphone and stuff like that and we actually had somebody get hurt. So we want to avoid that. So I will call people up one at a time. If, if someone is on who I'm. I'm somewhat picking at random. I don't know many of these people, but I will try to get a mix of people who I know live in Fairview and people who I may be from another place.
Video Clip 5 [01:06:48] And we're trying to get a good mix of things here. There is one group that I want to acknowledge first and I want to give them the first opportunity to get up and speak and that is we have a number of our ex council members or mayors here tonight.
Video Clip 5 [01:07:05] And I wanted to give that organ those, those folks to come up and as a group we would not do this normally, but I'm going to break the rules here. So please those folks. I know Darian's here. Mary, Dick, please come up and Ron, Carolyn, Renee. Okay, thank
Video Clip 5 [01:07:30] you
Video Clip 5 [01:07:33] and go ahead. We have the three minute rule though. So you, everybody knows. That's one. One other thing I did not announce. Normally when you come to a Fairview town council meeting, we give you five minutes to talk. We're very generous. If you go to some of our surrounding cities, you get one or two minutes. But because of the number of people here tonight, maybe the number of people that might speak, we're going to limit to three minutes. So. So a little bit different for us, but I think we can probably get things said in those three minutes. So Mr. Price, go right ahead.
Video Clip 5 [01:08:03] I'll do my best. Mr. Major. Council member, My name is Mary Price. I live at 579 Meandering Way and former council member. Joining me this evening are five additional former council members. Renee Pyle, Carolyn Summers Erickson, Ron Cajun, Dick Price and former mayor Darian Culberson.
Video Clip 5 [01:08:23] Collectively, we represent 60 plus years of governance and service to the town of Fairview. We are here to address you regarding the conditional use permit submitted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But first I would like to acknowledge the vast space community that we do have. Emmanuel Lutheran, Friendship Baptist, Prequid United Methodist, Good Seed Korean Church, Faith Anglican Mosaic Church, New Heritage Fellowship, Chase Oaks Church and Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints Meeting House. Fairview has always welcomed and continues to welcome faith communities to call Fairview home. The following comments are about the request of the applicant. The applicant is planning to build a second structure, a temple and the zoning residential 1 acre minimum height restriction in this zoning is 35ft.
Video Clip 5 [01:09:22] LDS is asking for a height of 65ft with additional height of 173ft 8 inches to the top of the spire. 5 times higher than is permitted in RE 1 and 5 times higher in existing neighborhood residents in Fairview and Alternative.
Video Clip 5 [01:09:44] If the cup is approved, these long established homes will be living in the shadow of the temple. Our town has proudly represented the motto of keeping a country. The vision of keeping a country was established in the early 90s when growth was happening all around us. The town leaders at the time, which Carolyn was one of them wanted to ensure homeowners were protected by zoning and keeping Fairview unique with the trees, open space and dark skies.
Video Clip 5 [01:10:16] Some have said keep it country left when 711 came in. Others have said how do you have country with a Macy's? The reality is we are living the vision of Keep it country that was set forward back in the 90s. Commercial with larger buildings will remain in the zone commercial areas.
Video Clip 5 [01:10:38] Those preferring small lot homes as a subset of the commercial district. Further east towns further eastern town the large the lots are larger. Fairview offers something for everyone. So here we are today, Fairview united Keep it country needing to defend our ordinances and asking you council to deny the request for this non conforming building that prefers to be known as the McKinney Temple in Fairview and built in the backyards of our Fairview residents. We encourage the LDS community to revise
Video Clip 5 [01:11:14] their plans and we ran out of time on yours. Does somebody else want to speak? Thank you.
Video Clip 5 [01:11:21] We encourage the LDS community to revise
Video Clip 5 [01:11:23] their plans to meet the current zoning
Video Clip 5 [01:11:25] with any precedence already established.
Video Clip 5 [01:11:27] Thank you, Renee.
Video Clip 5 [01:11:31] Thank you. Good evening Mayor Lester and town of Fairview council members. My name is Dick Price. I live at 579 Meandering Way Fairview and have been a town of Fairview resident since 1995. I'm proud to be a part of this esteemed group speaking tonight which as you just heard represents more, excuse me, than 60 years of collective service to the Town of Fairview as elected officials.
Video Clip 5 [01:11:52] There is a precedence already in place in the Town of Fairview in both buildings Fire Heights for religious facilities and I believe those should be used to guide the decision process for this temple. That would mean a building height of 39ft 10 inches as approved for Faith Church in 12. 2 of 14, a spire height of 68ft as approved for LDS Meeting House and 7. 2 of 13.
Video Clip 5 [01:12:14] Further, I'd like to point out that based on previous decisions for other temples located in Texas, the LDS Church should consider the reduction of the overall footprint to be more in line with and respectful of the town of Fairview's Re 1 zone where they would like to build. For comparison, the Dallas temple footprint is slightly smaller, but then again Dallas is much larger than the Town of Fairview and that dynamic should be taken into consideration.
Video Clip 5 [01:12:40] It is also worth mentioning that the footprint for this temple as proposed in the Town of Fairview is larger than temples in much larger cities such as Chicago, Manhattan, New York, Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee as well as international cities like Paris and Frankfurt. In fact, if you were to take the footprints of Manhattan, Memphis and Nashville temples combined, they would only slightly exceed the footprint being requested for this temple. I really believe a temple with a smaller footprint that has been used in numerous other cities in addition to complying with our existing building Inspire Heights for religious facilities could provide a pathway for accommodating the LDS Temple here in the Town of Fairview to more easily blend with the residential community.
Video Clip 5 [01:13:22] As a final point, you may have noticed I have used Town of Fairview numerous times in my comments. Where are we meeting tonight? Town of Fairview this council serves the Town of Fairview and its residents. The temple is being requested to be built in the Town of Fairview. This is not McKinney. It is bad enough for LDS to try and place a grossly oversized building Inspire into the middle middle of a residential neighborhood, but the name at the McKinney Temple is an absolute show of total disrespect and an affront to our residents and all that we as elected officials have worked on for over 30 years to not be like McKinney.
Video Clip 5 [01:14:00] I would think if the LDS Church would like to be good religious partners in the Town of Fairview and I fully believe they want to, a name change to Fairview Temple, North Texas Temple or Collin County Temple would be a much more welcoming approach to truly assimilate into the Town of Fairview Environment.
Video Clip 5 [01:14:17] McKinney may be unique by nature. But the town of Fairview is unique by design. I hope this council sees to it that it stays that way. Thanks for your time,
Video Clip 5 [01:14:36] Mr. Mayor and
Video Clip 5 [01:14:36] members of the council. Darien Culbertson, 700 Maple Creek Drive, Fairview, Texas. As I have reviewed and compensated this matter, I continue to ask the question, what has changed in the relationship between the LDS church and the town of Fairview?
Video Clip 5 [01:14:52] As many of you know, I was a member of the town's leaders elected leadership team and the LDS meeting house was approved and built in the town of Fairview. I spent time with the LDS leadership to understand the needs of the meeting house. And I also spent time with our residents, not only listing, but hearing their concerns. Traffic, lighting, building size were all issues that were worked on together to find common ground within our code of ordinances. And with that common ground, we welcomed the meeting house to the same manner that we welcomed other members of the faith based community to the town of Fairview.
Video Clip 5 [01:15:28] Members of the council, as currently contemplated, there is no common ground on this matter. I, along with other elected officials, have worked tirelessly to always make sure that we do no harm and that our zoning ordinances only enhance the lifestyle of our residents. And the sheer height of this facility does not meet that standard. While you have a responsibility to discuss, deliberate debate the application, you also have the ultimate responsibility to decide what's in the best interest of our residents, especially those residents that are in close proximity to this facility.
Video Clip 5 [01:16:09] So what has changed? While I don't know the answer to that question, I do know that this application does not meet the standard of enhancing the lifestyle of a resident. And as such, I ask you to respectfully request that this application be denied and denied with prejudice.
John Dehlin [01:16:36] The audience is clapping, but it's not playing the audio for the audience clapping.
▶ Video Clip 6Video Clip 6 [01:16:41] Just so, people, thank you all for your service and thank you for your comments tonight. All right, I'm going to now go to my pile of names and I'm going to pull one up that I know well. Jay Jones. There he is. I saw him here. What up, Jay? How you doing? And that's your son, right?
Video Clip 6 [01:17:03] Well, thank you, Mayor.
Video Clip 6 [01:17:05] This is my grandson, Blake, and I asked him to come up to just hold a few photos for sure. First of all, mayor and members of the council, I. I'm thankful for a few minutes to just express my feelings.
Video Clip 6 [01:17:20] Great, great question Mayor Culberson stated is what has changed, right? The temple. J. Jones, 360 Collinwood Drive. Excuse me. The temple is the most sacred building for faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. Place where sacred ordinances are held. The rooms, the size of the rooms, the beauty of those rooms, the height of those rooms, the way they're put together and the steeple and the size of the building is important in terms of our religious service, in terms of our. Of our worship there. So it all comes together to make a temple. Not a meeting house like we already have here, but a temple.
Video Clip 6 [01:18:05] Like in the old days, you had synagogues and you had the temple. There was a difference. Big difference. Okay, say we've lived here and Fairview 38 years. We love it. It's a great community. And we raised our kids here. They went to the Lovejoy High School. The old sign that was Fairview Keeping a country. One of our Eagle Scouts, Matt Godfrey made was over here on Highway 5.
Video Clip 6 [01:18:29] And.
Video Clip 6 [01:18:30] And Stacy, until he built 7 11, as was said earlier. Well, how do we solve this? I mean, we. We love this place, the temple, and we would like to build it. And we think where we've asked to build it is a perfect location. If you note, most of our temples are built in residential areas. Why? Because the peace and serenity there complements the peace and reverence of the work that goes on in a temple. The. As I look out my porch, right, I used to see a horse farm there where young girls would come and put their helmets on and jump over the obstacles and things like that. And now I see Sloan Creek School.
Video Clip 6 [01:19:24] Y', all.
Video Clip 6 [01:19:25] I know Sloan Creek School looks like. So we'll leave that out. See, we can find that.
Video Clip 6 [01:19:30] Jay, just remember you. You got.
Video Clip 6 [01:19:32] So he's looking in his pouch for some.
Video Clip 6 [01:19:35] Some not as fun to look at as the farm, but everybody needs schools, right? When I look out to the right side, what do I see? I see our water tower, at least as tall as the temple, the way it sits up there, right? Is that my favorite view? No, but we all have to share and give a little bit it. So I look at a water tower, and it's cool. I've got a pretty view. It's not that bad. But that's the way we've resolved things in the past in our town is we share, we give a little bit, and, you know, we look at things that may not be our very favorite, but they're beautiful. This will be gorgeous to look at, I promise.
Video Clip 6 [01:20:14] Now.
Video Clip 6 [01:20:17] Yeah.
Video Clip 6 [01:20:17] Thank you very much.
Video Clip 6 [01:20:18] We hit this right here, 154ft.
Video Clip 6 [01:20:24] Let somebody else. Need to let somebody else deal with that.
Video Clip 6 [01:20:27] Thank you so much.
John Dehlin [01:20:41] Rebecca. Rebecca, any quick commentary while they're all right.
Guest 4 [01:20:45] I'm going to call.
John Dehlin [01:20:47] Oh, never mind.
Guest 4 [01:20:52] Douglas still go. That is name.
John Dehlin [01:20:55] That's our very own Nemo the Mormon
Radio Free Mormon [01:20:58] all the way here comes direct from England. Hello. There he is.
Residents and Church Members Address Fairview Council
▶ Video Clip 7Video Clip 7 [01:21:02] My name is Douglas Stilgo and I've traveled here from Oxford, England. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I am a graduate of the Church's seminary program. I am a returned missionary and I'm also the UK's leading commentator on the church.
Video Clip 7 [01:21:16] There are three simple points that need to be made here, particularly in response to the claim being made that the height of the steeple is part of our religious observance. One, temples do not need a steeple. Two, the steeple does not have to be a certain height and three, architectural design is secondary to the temple's primary purpose. The church currently has 199 temples that are either operating, being refurbished or awaiting dedication. All of these are equal in their value to laissez, Saint worship worship. They all provide access to the same covenants and ordinances. And there are several prominent examples of temples with no steeple at all.
Video Clip 7 [01:21:50] Mesa, Arizona, Cardston, Alberta, Lay, Hawaii, and most recently Paris, France. Of those temples that do have a steeple, the shortest is just 54ft in Freiburg, Germany. In fact, almost 90% of the church's temples have a steeple shorter than what is being proposed here in Fairview. At 173ft feet and 8 inches, it is eminently acceptable to the church in almost 90% of cases to have a steeple shorter than what they're asking for here in Fairview. The shortest temple the church has ever built is the Paris, France temple. At just 42ft tall with no spire, no steeple, yet it has a square footage of 44, 175 square feet, the same as the proposed temple in Fairview.
Video Clip 7 [01:22:33] Steeple height, therefore, cannot be argued by square footage. And speaking of the Paris, France temple, Presiding Bishop of the Church Gerard Corsair said, there are a number of constraints that we have the code that we have to respect, but in the end, it is only good because it makes for a temple that everybody accepts and recognizes as theirs. The Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church publicly declared that respect for planning, code and constraints is a good thing because it makes for a temple that everybody accepts and recognizes as their own.
Video Clip 7 [01:23:04] Where is that attitude here? Furthering Bishop Caucey's point, the Church has said a temple's design, both internal and external, is secondary to its primary purpose. The prophet and president of the Church. Russell M. Nelson said more plainly in 2022. It's not the location, it's not the architecture, it's the ordinances inside.
Video Clip 7 [01:23:22] I've heard many claims that the steeple variance is request required by LDS beliefs, and that's simply not the case. The president of the church has said otherwise. The actions of local leaders and are not in harmony with the teachings of the prophet of the church.
Video Clip 7 [01:23:35] And I don't know why they're ignoring the plain teachings of the president of the church. But what I can say categorically is as a member of this church, steeple height has never mattered. I have known throughout my entire membership of church that some temples have steeples and others do not. I think LDS Apostle David A Bed now summarized it best in April 2023, just last year when he said, regarding temples, who cares what size it is if you have access to the same covenants and ordinances? And thank you very much.
John Dehlin [01:24:12] And again, the audience is clapping, but they're not playing the audio of that for some reason.
▶ Video Clip 8Video Clip 8 [01:24:17] All right, I have a name. Michelle Countryman. Countrymen. Does anybody know who that is? Michelle back. Oh, here she is right back there. Okay, come on up, Michelle. Tell us your name and where you what your address is, please.
Video Clip 8 [01:24:44] Hello, Rent.
Video Clip 8 [01:24:46] I'm a lot shorter than most people.
Video Clip 8 [01:24:50] All right.
Video Clip 8 [01:24:50] My name is Michelle Cranman. I am from 205 Newchester Drive in the city of Fairview.
Video Clip 8 [01:24:55] Okay.
Video Clip 8 [01:24:57] Good evening, mayor and city council members. I want to publicly thank you for allowing this opportunity to have a voice and to speak for our city's future. My name is Michelle Countryman and my family, who consists of five children. My husband and I have been residents of Fairview for seven years. I've been a nurse for 20 years, and five of those years were in the Lovejoy School district. I love our community and its people, especially the kids, since I served them and had a chance to be their school nurse. I am proud to be a resident of Fairview, even though we've had our struggles. When we first moved here, my oldest started seventh grade and was terrified of starting middle school.
Video Clip 8 [01:25:35] As a new kid, she made some great friends, but was heavily bullied by another group of kids. They went as far as to opening a fake Instagram account that looked like it belonged to my daughter and posted pictures from an old family blog to make her fun of her. My daughter was mortified, so she texted the boy that seemed to be the primary culprit and asked him to remove this account.
Video Clip 8 [01:25:55] He said no, and that quote, every Effing Mormon should die. End quote. Where are these children learning such hate? Then just a few days ago, my 13 year old son and his 14 year old friend went door to door as citizens of Fairview and Lovejoy students to collect petition signatures for the temple. My son was bombarded with rude, hateful and angry words about his religion by grown adults. My 13 year old son.
Video Clip 8 [01:26:27] Then later I read on social media that our very own mayor accused me of, as I took it that way, of quote, those young boys have been lied to. What some call lying for the Lord. I was at the PNZ meeting and prepared to share very personal or heartfelt comments intended for my Fairview friends about why the temple meant so much to me.
Video Clip 8 [01:26:58] But everyone here already knows what that meeting turned out. But to enlighten those who weren't there in attendance, we were booed, told to be quiet when to speak, interrupted multiple times with no support from the committee and called names like unneighborly and bullies and told shame on you to our face with fingers pointed.
Video Clip 8 [01:27:18] This PNZ meeting brought back my family struggles when we first came here and had since moved here that we continue to follow us through our Fairway resident experience. So yes, I'm here to speak to you because my family and our members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints and I respectfully, I am not here to shame or call you unneighborly, but I'm here to call attention to this. I want you to know that we have no intentions to be unneighborly. And I am sorry you are feeling like we have been bullies. We are standing up for ourselves because we need a temple in Fairview. Fairview needs this temple. The temple will bring peace to this area and for all its residents, regardless of their religion.
Video Clip 8 [01:27:54] The chin.
Video Clip 8 [01:27:55] Thank you.
John Dehlin [01:28:01] I do not see applause in the audience on that one. Just for the record.
▶ Video Clip 9Video Clip 9 [01:28:08] Hey, get off there. Get off.
Video Clip 9 [01:28:16] I helped him design those shirts. They say obey the laws of the land.
Video Clip 9 [01:28:19] Okay, I was just asking a question.
Guest 2 [01:28:20] This is.
John Dehlin [01:28:21] We're here in studio. We're having too much fun.
Guest 5 [01:28:23] Yes, we are.
Rebecca Villateca [01:28:24] Sorry, I have to back up out
Radio Free Mormon [01:28:25] of focus so I can watch the proceedings.
Rebecca Villateca [01:28:27] Oh my gosh. It's too much.
▶ Video Clip 10Video Clip 10 [01:28:33] Okay, Kaiser, I'm being honest, but I'm choosing people who live in peer view first. Just so you know that I'll.
Video Clip 10 [01:28:48] I'll.
Video Clip 10 [01:28:48] If we have time to get to the others. There's a handful of people that wanted to speak from other towns. I'll try to get to them, but I'm trying to get Fairview people first, so Ms. Kaiser, please go ahead.
Video Clip 10 [01:28:59] My name is Gan Kaiser. I've lived in Fairview at 100 Man Ward Lane for 25 years. I'm speaking for someone named Marla Ballard who cannot be here tonight. So this is what she wrote. My name is Marla Ballard. I live at 130 Horseshoe Bend in Fairview. I've lived in Fairview for 21 years. I'm speaking to you today because I love Fairview and I want to preserve the peace and charm of our small town, which is the reason we moved here.
Video Clip 10 [01:29:31] Zoning is important because it produces consistency and predictability. As home buyers, we research the local zoning before we bought our home homes. We did this to be sure we were making sound investments and to have confidence we would be able to enjoy the peaceful sanctitude that only a home can provide.
Video Clip 10 [01:29:51] Zoning also gives us the reasonable expectation that these rights won't be trampled by callous and unrestrained development. The purpose of zoning is to protect. Yet somehow here we are in this room seeking protection. Why is the largest temple in Texas being shoehorned into a residential area of Fairview?
Video Clip 10 [01:30:14] This temple will be larger and taller than every temple in the state of Texas, including the temples in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth. If approved, the roof of this chapel will be taller than our town hall and the steeple will be the tallest structure in Fairview. While the LDS Church has every right to apply for a cup of the height variance they're requesting is extreme and unneighborly. Just look at the scaled renderings in this room.
Video Clip 10 [01:30:43] We welcomed the LDS in 2013 and we would like to welcome the new addition. However, the variance they are seeking is obtrusive and quite frankly, disrespectful to the residents of Fairview. Churches are not exempt from reasonable zoning restrictions. Height restrictions are not a substantial burden to the religious observance of Mormon because. Because dozens of smaller and shorter temples exist here in Texas, across the US and around the world.
Video Clip 10 [01:31:11] This town of Fairview is duty bound to consider the damaging effects of this giant structure on our small town. Atmosphere, aesthetics, night skies, wildlife, skyline and traffic. Please, I implore you, stand up for zoning. Protect the residents of Fairview from a structure so imposing, so large and so dominating that it will forever alter the fabric of Fairview. Thank you.
Video Clip 10 [01:31:38] Thank you.
Video Clip 10 [01:31:45] Again, lots of applauding from the audience.
Video Clip 10 [01:31:48] Susan Hedge Hedgeset lives on Rosemount, Rosemont Lane. Is she here? Susan? All right. Well, she may be outside. So we're trying to run her down. We need to give her a chance to speak. I don't know her. Okay, let's try another one. I don't know. Stephen. For door. For doer. Say it again for dory. Okay, Stephen.
Video Clip 10 [01:32:26] Good evening. My name is Stephen Fordor and I reside in the Bridal Gate community. My wife and I have been residents of the town of Fairview for 20 years. I'll be speaking to you this evening regarding the proposed roof height for the LDS structure.
Video Clip 10 [01:32:40] I also addressed this item during the PNZ meeting. The proposed LDS building roof height is 65ft. The tallest building height precedent granted for religious facilities by the town of Fairview is 39ft 10 inches back in 2019. Just a side note, the residents in 2019 had concerns with that approved height and discussed it with the church leaders. And the leaders finally decided to lower the building height to 24ft. Now that's what I call being neighborly.
Video Clip 10 [01:33:11] The LDS proposal was requesting an additional height variance of 25ft 2 inches over that 39ft 10 inches for the total of 65ft. That's 63% higher than the current precedent. That is extreme. My concern has nothing to do with the LDS organization. As we all know, there is already an existing structure in that area. And to be honest with you, it fits quite nicely in our community.
Video Clip 10 [01:33:40] My issue is the current proposal submitted blatantly exceeds the building height precedent as well as several other ordinances the town has in place to protect its residents with at least one of the items in the proposal. LDS is attempting to use religious symbolism as the reason for its variance request. Well, there's no religious symbolism for a 65 foot building height that I can think of other than them just wanting it to be that height.
Video Clip 10 [01:34:08] I'm quite certain if I bring to the PNZ committee conditional use permit requesting approvals for some type of variance on my property with the argument that yeah, I just want would ultimately be denied. I can see no reason or benefit to the town that would warn an increase to the current building height precedent in a residential zoned area.
Video Clip 10 [01:34:30] The proposed LDS structure is only entitled to the current precedent setting cup of 39ft 10 inches, not an inch more. I don't see any reason why any increase in building height should be approved on this structure or any other structure in a residential zoned area.
Video Clip 10 [01:34:47] Precedents matter for decades into the future. It's pretty cut and dry that the proposed LDS building height exceeds our residential ordinances and existing precedent and should be denied from a building height perspective. This cup should not be considered until it aligns with the town's existing building Height precedent of 39ft 10in.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:09] As I mentioned in the PNZ meeting. Meeting, this decision will determine the future skyline of our small town of 11,000 residents. I'm asking the town council to abide by the ruling set forth by the PNZ committee and deny the cup in its current state until it meets all the standards of the current preview zoning ordinances and precedence. I just hope you, as our town leaders are strong enough to.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:34] Thank you, Steven.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:43] Lots of applause for that one.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:44] I just want to make a comment. Thank you for everyone who's spoken so far respecting our three minute time limit. Somebody was going to say something.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:50] Yes.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:51] The previous speaker card that was called for Susan.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:53] She's in the room.
Video Clip 10 [01:35:54] Oh, okay. So, Susan Hedge F. Say it again. Edge. Okay. Hi, Susan.
Video Clip 10 [01:36:08] Hello.
Video Clip 10 [01:36:08] Tell us your name, your address. You're a Fairview resident, right?
Video Clip 10 [01:36:12] I am.
Video Clip 10 [01:36:13] 417 Rosemont Lane.
Video Clip 10 [01:36:14] Okay.
Video Clip 10 [01:36:15] Lived here since 2012. My husband and I are retired. I'm not going to go. I agree with what everybody has said about the building being simply too large for the area that they're trying to put it in. I do not appreciate the fact that they have brought a lot of people in from evidently Europe and all over the place that don't live here to try to convince you to do away with the planning and zoning that we have. I do want to point out one thing. I do agree. It is too big. If they want to build the temple, it needs to be considerably smaller. They've already pointed out that. That there is no height or
Video Clip 10 [01:37:00] there's
Video Clip 10 [01:37:00] no restriction that they have to follow. They're not all uniform. So why they are choosing to do this in this area, I have no idea. However, I do want to point out one thing that I have not heard anybody else bring up. The public will not be allowed into that building. If anybody who is not a Mormon in good standing wants to go to the building next door, that's allowed. But that temple, if you are not a Mormon in good standing, you are not allowed in that building. Therefore, not only are they bringing that into the city, and I consider it a monstrosity, but most of the people that live here wouldn't even be allowed inside anyway. So I. I find that doubly wrong. That's all I wanted to say.
Video Clip 10 [01:37:52] Thank you, Susan. All right. I'm looking at Jason Jones. Thank you. Maybe the grand. The son. Hi, Jason.
Video Clip 10 [01:38:15] Good evening. Thank you. My name is Jason Jones. As you know, I live at 380 Collinwood, resident of Fairview. Fairview is my hometown. I appreciate the response you gave John Hubbard. Thank you so much. I'm pleased to be gathered with what I believe are many of the finest people in Fairview, regardless of what position they hold. On this particular topic, I'd like to offer a couple of observations. I did go to the Lovejoy Elementary School.
Video Clip 10 [01:38:41] At that time, we were not big enough to have a middle school or high school. We relied on a neighboring Allen district. Right. To provide that for us. I believe this is an opportunity for our city to look at this from a different perspective.
Video Clip 10 [01:38:54] To be neighborly to those around us. Fairview is an aspirational place for many people to live or to visit. To be able to live in Fairview represents a dream. Certainly was a dream growing up here. But many people aspire to be here. I believe that this building and its grounds in particular will provide a place of peace where people can come and enjoy the temple. I have one other comment about the exterior of a temple. A building like this.
Video Clip 10 [01:39:24] As a teenager having excellent teenager judgment, I ended up literally clinging to the side of a precipice looking down into a valley hundreds of feet below. I watched the sunset fade. And I realized I was going to be there for the night.
Video Clip 10 [01:39:45] Search and rescue was notified. They were unwilling to try to issue any effort to come and collect me during the night. Where do you go when you are alone in the night? Hopefully your thoughts go to your loved ones. I know mine did. To my home, to my hometown.
Video Clip 10 [01:40:11] As I was there, I turned and the only thing that I could recognize as I looked down was a temple building. Not this one, but it was lit it at night. When search and rescue finally got to me. They said, were you lost?
Video Clip 10 [01:40:33] And I said, no, I could always see the temple. They told me that staying there on that precipice that night and staying put was the safest thing I could have done. I am grateful for the physical exterior of a temple and that it is lit during at least a portion of the night.
Video Clip 10 [01:40:53] Night.
Video Clip 10 [01:40:53] I am not responsible for any of this design. But I do know this has been designed to comply with the residential lighting requirements. I leave this with you for your consideration. Fairview is an amazing place. I'm so grateful to be a part of it. I'm grateful to share it with all of these neighbors. And I hope we can host those that aspire to live like Fairview. It will enhance its identity as a desirable place to live. Thank you.
Video Clip 10 [01:41:18] You.
Video Clip 10 [01:41:18] Thank you, Jason.
Video Clip 10 [01:41:32] Okay. Is Ben K. Here. Cooney, I. Ben.
Video Clip 10 [01:41:41] Good evening, Mayor, Councilman. Thank you for your service. My name is Ben Keaney. I live at 171
Video Clip 10 [01:41:50] Horseshoe Bend within
Video Clip 10 [01:41:52] the Bridal Gate subdivision which is adjacent to the proposed temple. My wife Alicia and I have been residents since 2014. We moved to Fairview for the large lots and the keeping it country motto. Even though some here think that that's no longer the case. I oppose the cup. And as it is currently written written, I don't mind the LDS building a temple that serves their congregation. I just want them to follow the zoning restrictions for building height as defined by our town building ordinances and past precedent. Steve mentioned the building height. I want to talk about the steeple. Regarding the steeple height, current city ordinance ordinances restrict building height to 35ft.
Guest 17 [01:42:36] However, architectural features such as spires and steeples have been approved to Greater Heights than 35ft and serve as a precedent. That said, the precedents given by the applicant do not apply. Examples are. Number one, the two existing Fairview water towers and the radio tower have been used as reference for maximum building height.
Guest 17 [01:43:02] But they're not relevant because they don't have occupants and they're also in re one zones. They don't apply. Number two, the four story town hall has also been used as a reference for maximum building height, but it also does not apply. Because it's located in a commercial zone. It does not apply.
Guest 17 [01:43:23] Lastly, the Creekwood United Methodist Church has also been referred to as a precedent for a maximum steeple height of 154ft feet. However, the height was not approved by the town of Fairview and was not constructed. The current Creekwood United Methodist Church has a steeple feature height of 55ft, 5 and a half inches from the ground level.
Guest 17 [01:43:47] All of those do not apply as precedent. Currently, the tallest steeple in an Re 1 zone of the town of Fairview is at a height of 68ft feet from ground level. This special privilege of 68ft was granted to the LDS already. This is the height of their steeple, the existing LDS meeting hall. My recommendation is that you do not approve the cup until it meets a maximum building height of 3910. Like Steve mentioned. And with a steeple height of only 68ft, not an inch more, they've already been given the special privilege of having the highest steeple in town. They don't need more privileges than that.
Guest 13 [01:44:34] Thank you.
Guest 4 [01:44:43] As I said, I'm going through the Fairview names and any of them I do not know. But Is Brooke Willard here? Brooke Willard. Brooke Willard. All right, I'm going to put that one aside. If she's out in Hawaii or something, we'll try that one a little bit.
John Dehlin [01:45:02] Quick comment, Rebecca. Yes, just quick comment.
Rebecca Villateca [01:45:05] I have one earphone on, one earphone off.
Guest 15 [01:45:07] Anything.
Rebecca Villateca [01:45:08] Do you have a question? I would like to say that when they talk about approving the cup, that's a conditional use permit. This is what the church is saying. We need special treatment so that we can build our tall at past. Sorry, can I say that? Our tall building. But if you do notice the residents there
Guest 2 [01:45:26] over in Thompson Springs, we've been here since 2004. My in laws are actually in River Oaks at 751 Timberwood Lane and have been here since, I believe, 90, 1988 or 87. My husband went to the old Allen High School when it was small. So we've been out here for a really, really long time. I would ask the council to deny this petition as far as with prejudice. Also, I would ask you to deny the continuance. This is ripping our town apart.
Guest 2 [01:45:55] We need to have some healing. We are in a situation now where there's Mormon in this community that have been our friends and neighbors and they're pitted against us. There's a lot of lying and deceit and misinformation that has been given to residents of Fairview. Another one woman talked about her daughter and what happened to her. And I know all of us, doesn't matter what religion you are, have issues with kids, with bullying. That's just. Just something that happens.
Guest 2 [01:46:21] But, you know, the kids went around and were knocking on doors for petitions. And I know someone who told me that when they went around and I get that they probably didn't realize what they were saying, but the quote was said, I don't know. That was her sons, by the way. It could be somebody else.
Guest 2 [01:46:36] That is really not that big. They're making it seem like it's a lot bigger than it is. It's really not that big. Would you sign our petition?
Guest [01:46:43] That's deceitful.
Guest 2 [01:46:44] That's not telling the truth. It is as big as they say. I would ask that this council does not compromise on this issue. This needs to be put to bed. This needs to be denied with prejudice. Let them come back in a year and. And come back with something that is no bigger than what they currently have, which is the maximum that this council already has given them a variance for and already made an exception for them. Let's not make that go further. And Be more than.
Guest 7 [01:47:16] All right.
Guest 4 [01:47:16] Brooke willard. Hi, brooke.
Guest 12 [01:47:24] I prepared.
Rebecca Villateca [01:47:25] Oh, okay.
Guest 3 [01:47:27] Bring the mic.
Guest 4 [01:47:31] Pull the mic down.
Guest 12 [01:47:31] Just because I'm short.
Guest 13 [01:47:33] It's okay.
Guest 4 [01:47:33] Yeah.
Guest 3 [01:47:34] I'm sorry.
Guest 12 [01:47:34] I know.
Guest [01:47:34] Sorry.
Guest 12 [01:47:35] Dealt with it my entire life.
Guest 4 [01:47:37] No, their problem was they're tall. You're not.
Rebecca Villateca [01:47:39] They're perfect.
Guest 4 [01:47:39] Okay, ahead.
Guest 12 [01:47:40] So, as a taxpayer of this beautiful town, I'm here to express that I am against the temple being built as planned. However, first, I want to start by saying myself and my family are not against your religious beliefs. We are against your lack of respect for the city of Fairview, their zoning and planning regulations and laws. As much as we love having you all as neighbors, we are willing to not have you as neighbors if it means upholding the regulations put in place by the city of Fairview. You to keep it as quaint, peaceful, and as country as we can in today's world.
Guest 12 [01:48:19] Two years ago, my husband and I moved our family from Lucas to Fairview. Not far, but much more of what we were hoping for. We bought a home on three acres, which I know some of you have had to deal with me a lot. But we built a home. I mean, we didn't build it. We bought a home on three acres that desperately needed to be remodeled. Or should I say gutted.
Guest 12 [01:48:42] We went through the whole permitting process with the city, learned all the regulations and laws when it came to building and zoning and planning and permitting and what we could do, what we couldn't do, what was required to get our permit, and, may I say, they graciously helped answer any and all questions we had along the way. Yes, it was a pain, but in the end, I appreciated the process, and I know my neighbors did, too.
Guest 12 [01:49:08] We are proud to call Fairview our home, proud to uphold its laws and regulations and the like in order to continue to live in this area as it was planned to be. Our town hall is our beacon of pride, one might say, for Fairview. It's a beautiful building, and it serves every one of its residents and has the answers you might be looking for.
Guest 12 [01:49:29] However, you knew and you know the lot, us and the regulations of our town, yet keep pushing for building this temple, which far surpasses our town hall in terms of height and, of course, lighting. And it's not for everyone.
Guest 12 [01:49:44] However, our town hall is in a business district, not residential, and we hear from your patrons, its height, massiveness, will bring them peace. Well, there was a veteran that spoke last month at the town hall, and I do not know him, and I do not know his name, but if he's here. Your story was not lost on me, and I'm here to speak for him.
Guest 12 [01:50:09] He lives behind where this building is proposed. And as I said, I don't remember his name, but being a wife of a former army officer, his story was not lost on me. And therefore, let me say, to be neighborly is to understand this man served our country, fought for the freedoms we all have to be able to speak freely in support of or opposition of this temple. This gentleman stated he sought out that property because it brought him peace for himself and his family. Doesn't that mean more? It should, with grace and heart, be neighborly.
Guest 4 [01:50:46] Go ahead and finish up.
Guest 12 [01:50:47] Thank you. Therefore, I ask that if this temple is to be built, that it does not cause this town to have to approve a new cup that you abide by our regulations already in place on the books. If this is not something your church is willing to do because you are not able.
Guest 4 [01:51:06] Brooke, we need to. We need to stop it there. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Guest 12 [01:51:09] Thank you.
Guest 4 [01:51:09] Thank you.
John Dehlin [01:51:15] Lots of applause for that one. Rebecca's also applauding.
Rebecca Villateca [01:51:17] Yeah, we know Joel, who she's talking about. And he's amazing, wonderful, a wonderful person.
Guest 4 [01:51:24] All right. Continuing looking for people from Fairview. Gary Carter, You have something for us six? Is it going to be up on the screen so everybody else can see it?
Rebecca Villateca [01:51:56] They wouldn't allow it.
Guest 4 [01:51:58] Okay. Okay. Why don't you give a copy to Kimberly Horn here so they have a copy of it also.
Guest 3 [01:52:13] Good evening, mayor, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Gary Carter. I live at 1000 Timber Lane in Fairview.
Guest 4 [01:52:23] If they have Josh, if there's other ones, go ahead and distribute those to the folks.
Guest 3 [01:52:26] My wife and I moved here for the promise of the town provides, including quality public schools, a peaceful country lifestyle facilitated by ordinances that required large lots, and protections for our dark skies and local farmers. We've lived here 24 years, and in that time, our ordinances have been honed to accommodate creative residential and commercial development whilst protecting our unique rural environment, not only for the enjoyment of our family and friends, but also accommodation for the diverse wildlife population that lives and thrives here. Examples include insects, amphibians, reptiles, songbirds, owls, raptors, and a whole host of feral and domesticated animals, many of which depend upon the dark environment supporting their nocturnal needs and behaviors.
Guest 3 [01:53:09] Think dark skies and fireflies. As submitted, this lighting plan calls out 16 different light sources. Three of these light sources are intended to light the parking lot and walkways. The remaining 13 light sources are intended to illuminate the 173 foot structure. Note. Of the 13 light sources illuminating the structure, the lighting plan presently lacks any specification or implementation details for eight of these light fixtures. There's also nothing in the submitted plan that explains how the operating hours and after hours lighting levels are to be achieved. However, as submitted, we can begin to get a sense of where we stand in terms of the lighting budget for the site.
Guest 3 [01:53:48] As submitted, the total lumens shielded and unshielded for the lights with some specifications was at 394,956 lumens. The town ordinance permits 400,000 lumens. Ergo there's about 504 or 5004 lumens remaining. However, we still need specifications for the remaining eight light sources called for in the submitted plan.
Guest 3 [01:54:13] Addition, we need details for nine of those light sources. As submitted, the total lumens for the unshielded up facing lighting, that is those lights that illuminate the 173 foot structure and its architectural features was at 98,956 lumens. The town ordinance permits a total of 80,000 lumens for this site. So the plan already exceeded the maximum unshielded limited lumens by 18,956 lumens. Now, I understand some modifications have been sent to James, but they credit themselves zero up lighting. I want to point you to the lighting ordinance. Starting on page page 13, we'll talk about the improper use of light fixtures shielded and unshielded. You have to turn about six of those pages to get to this section.
Guest 4 [01:55:05] You're gonna run out of time.
Guest 8 [01:55:06] Yeah.
Guest 3 [01:55:06] I want to point you to one thing. The uplighting is prohibited in residential zones. And if you take a look at this image, this shows how they're going to uplight the side of this building. I did a calculation today on the back of the napkin, just estimating what
Rebecca Villateca [01:55:22] the point three albedo would be.
Guest 13 [01:55:25] Okay.
Guest 3 [01:55:26] And it's 557000 lumens that would reflect off this building.
Guest 4 [01:55:32] Thank you, Gary.
Guest 4 [01:55:32] Thank you.
Guest 4 [01:55:34] Okay.
Landon [01:55:42] It won't flood out, but what it does is you can see every part of the temple they like.
Rebecca Villateca [01:55:48] It dominates the landscape. There's no way to not see it.
Guest 4 [01:55:52] Dr. James, welcome every resident in my old neighborhood.
Guest 2 [01:55:59] That's true. That's true. So we lived here for my family about 22 years. And when we moved here, Terry James And I'm at 801 Creekwood Drive South. South used to live over in The Oakwood Estates. But we're now in River Oaks and this has been a wonderful place for us to raise our family.
Guest 2 [01:56:24] We moved here from Dallas. It was crowded, congested. We've always had acreage and we've enjoyed that. We had designed keeping a country. It's changed a lot, but I think it's changed in a good way. I enjoy the amenities. I like to have more than one store that we to go to it. And all the stop signs are on Station road that were 10 cars deep. And I had to go to the hospital. So I've enjoyed that blend between modern day and what this has represented as a country style life.
Guest 2 [01:56:55] As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I've been a temple attending member for many, many years. I've been a member of this church for almost 50 years. Years. And I think that we've been good neighbors to those that we know and know us. I know Air Culbertson from the past. When this meeting house was constructed on Stacy Road, we had meetings much like this. And we had similar kinds of objections.
Guest 2 [01:57:30] The traffic jams and this and that and the other. But we came to a meeting of the minds. We came to a point in a place in time where there's an understanding between our desires, what we wanted and what we thought we could bring to this community and what was ultimately achieved.
Guest 2 [01:57:52] And while there are differences that are present here, I think that those differences can be resolved. I think we can come to a point in a place where each of us. And I'm not speaking as some church authority on this matter. I'm simply speaking as a member of this church.
Guest 2 [01:58:13] I think that it's been our practice that resolution, meeting of the minds compromise has all been part of the history of people who I know in this church and this church as a whole. So I believe that we can come to a point where differences can be mended or there can be a common viewpoint and a common understanding where we can be as one family here in this Fairview community. That's my hope, that's my aspiration, and that's what I believe is possible.
Guest 5 [01:58:52] Thank you.
Rebecca Villateca [01:58:53] Thank you, Dr. Jones.
Guest 4 [01:59:04] All right, is ben brown here? Ben brown. Okay.
Guest 2 [01:59:19] We must do.
Guest 4 [01:59:19] We have a delayed reaction in the other room.
Guest 8 [01:59:24] They were applauding me coming out.
Guest 4 [01:59:26] Oh, yeah, they're applauding me coming out. Okay.
John Dehlin [01:59:31] Rebecca, explain really quick what you wanted to show. I'll show it on the screen.
Rebecca Villateca [01:59:35] If you saw the slide, it's.
John Dehlin [01:59:37] It's there.
Rebecca Villateca [01:59:37] Oh, is it there? Okay. This is the slide again that we looked at before. This gentleman that we just saw was talking about the stake center and there was some back and forth about that. I want to point out the stake center on the left hand side of that picture. It's the tiny little steeple that you see. You see the water tower in the far back and then you see the stake center steeple, teeny tiny. And then you see the temple. That is the height difference. I mean, it's almost impossible to explain, but you can kind of get a sense of it from that picture.
John Dehlin [02:00:07] Thanks, Rebecca. All right, back to the show.
Guest 2 [02:00:09] Show.
Guest 8 [02:00:09] 717 Mustang Drive here in Fairview. I've lived here since 2006.
Guest 4 [02:00:15] Thank you, man.
Guest 8 [02:00:17] One of the things they told us in their application is they want to operate the lighting system in compliance. Yet the last sentence of that paragraph totally contradicts that particular sentence. They say that they will extend the lighting from till 11pm and up to 5am I've illustrated that in what I've handed out an illustration showing that the lights will be in an undimmed mode from sunset to 11pm and an undim mode until from 5am to sunrise.
Guest 8 [02:01:05] Both of those periods of time you can infer that they will be out of compliance with the standards. Otherwise, why would they have to dim the lights till 11 o' clock at night? As it currently stands, the application does not meet the lighting standards of the community.
Guest 8 [02:01:31] I'm hoping that at the next iteration, if there is one, that the LDS folks will hear what they need to do to be in compliance. If they need me to read in the rules and regulations, I'll be glad to do that. They're pretty straightforward. But right now, as the application exists, the town has one option, and that's to deny the cup. Thank you.
Rebecca Villateca [02:02:05] Thank you, man.
Guest 4 [02:02:13] Is Don Tryal here on Tron? Don? There we are, front row.
Guest 13 [02:02:19] No.
Guest 4 [02:02:21] Oh, this is Dan. Okay, now I recognize you. Okay.
John Dehlin [02:02:29] And the gentleman's walking up with a poster.
Guest 15 [02:02:32] Good evening, Mayor.
Guest 8 [02:02:33] Hi.
Guest 15 [02:02:34] The council. Thank you for the time Tonight. I reside at 821 Parkman Place, Lucas, Texas. I am a local ecclesiastical leader for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, representing the congregations that meet at 651 E. Stacy Road in Fairview.
Guest 15 [02:02:55] There are two items that I would like to address tonight. First is the safety of our children and our youth. The youth of our church enjoy worshiping at our temple by performing sacred ordinances for their ancestors. Some of our older youth will brave the Traffic on highways 75 and 635 and make the trek down to Dallas in order to worship.
Guest 15 [02:03:18] This is if they're able to schedule time as that baptistry at that temple is often overbooked. Other youth struggle in their ability to drive on these major highways. And quite honestly, as a parent, I would prefer that they're not on these highways, especially during peak traffic hours.
Guest 15 [02:03:37] But I also want them to be able to worship in our temple. And having one here in Fairview will allow more of our youth that opportunity. The second item I'd like to address is that of precedence. In the planning and zoning meeting last month, the planning commission seemed concerned about setting precedence.
Guest 15 [02:03:57] I'd like to read a few excerpts from the town council minutes from September 5, 2006 regarding a conditional use permit for Creekwood United Methodist Church. The permit had been before planning and zoning and quote comes to the council with a recommendation to approve with a few conditions.
Guest 15 [02:04:13] One of the main concerns was the bell tower and the noise from the bells. There were several representatives from the church who spoke and gave a presentation of the entire campus at build out. This is only for phase one of the project. Steve Howard wanted to point out in the in a later phase, the height of the main building will be approximately 79ft.
Guest 15 [02:04:37] Chief Price said that they had worked on this and it would not be a problem. Mayor Israeloff opened the public hearing and requested anyone wishing to speak state their name and address for the record. Mike Hughes from Lucas, Pete Harris, Mike Mintz, Charlie Crane and Mike Beauchamp, all of Fairview, all spoke in favor of the project.
Guest 15 [02:04:56] There being no other comments or questions. Mayor Israel off close the public hearing. A motion was made by councilwoman Summers to approve the conditional use permit for Creekwood United Methodist Church as submitted, including the 150 foot height for the bell tower. And goes back to planning and zoning for the bells, but with note that council has no problems with the tower.
Guest 15 [02:05:20] Second by Mayor Pro Tem Frazier with all in favor. Every church in Fairview has likely gone through the process for a conditional use permit. It's the same legal process we're following tonight. My only question is if there were, quote, no problems with the tower and if it, quote, would not be a problem for a main building height of 79ft.
Guest 4 [02:05:41] Dan, go ahead and finish up.
Guest 15 [02:05:43] Why does our council have an issue with this building?
Guest 4 [02:05:46] Thank you.
Landon [02:05:54] Yeah, the United Methodist, I think it's Methodist church that he just talked about. The bell tower was not was denied later and was only built to about 60ft tall. That's why still have the largest steeple in town.
Guest 4 [02:06:08] Margi. Hi Margi.
John Dehlin [02:06:11] Thanks, Wayne.
Guest 4 [02:06:13] There's a delay at reaction.
Guest 16 [02:06:16] Hi, I'm Margi Smith. 281 Paddock Trail in Fairview, Texas Department of Transportation has standards for distance between driveways on state managed streets. Based on the road the speed limit for 50 mile an hour roads like Stacy Road driveways must have a minimum of 425ft apart. This allows a car to safely make the turn from a driveway and go from 0 to 50 miles an hour without causing an accident.
Traffic Impact, Drive Variance, and Council Decision
Guest 16 [02:06:48] The LDS Church is asking for a variance that was not mentioned in previous application memos allowing a new drive to be built on the eastern edge of the temple property that's only 135ft from the current driveway between their meeting house and the temple.
Guest 16 [02:07:06] That's less than a third of the normal distance required by TxDOT for 15 mile an hour speed. But it gets worse. The new LDS driveway is proposed to be only 487ft west of meandering Way. Where's Twin Creeks Church going to put their driveway if they want to meet the TxDOT standards?
Guest 16 [02:07:28] The Kinley Horn Report traffic report indicated it would only be 227ft east of the new LDS Drive. Which means the Twin Creeks Drive would be only 240ft from Meandering Way. So here's the lineup. Meandering Way, 240ft to the Twin Creeks Drive, 227 to the proposed Temple Drive, 135 to the shared LDS Drive and then 200ish to the west Meeting House Drive.
Guest 16 [02:07:56] Do you think that or that's four drives in a row and none of them meet the 425 foot distance? Do you really think TxDOT is going to approve that? I don't think so. Especially with all the accidents that happened at that intersection. There was another major1 just 9 days ago.
Guest 16 [02:08:16] In addition, the current LDS temple plan does not allow for cross property access to the Twin Creeks Church. That means Twin Creeks members coming from the west on Stacy cannot use the existing left turn lane at River Oaks to go to their church. They would either have to do a U turn at Meandering Way or turn left and use a new drive on Meandering Way that we really don't want.
Guest 16 [02:08:40] If the new drive for the LDS Temple is not allowed, Twin Creeks Church of Christ can meet the text requirements by locating their drive at the western edge of their property. And if the LDS Temple is neighborly and allows cross property access, Twin Creeks members will not be forced to U turn at Meandering Way.
Guest 16 [02:09:04] Fairview has never allowed these properties to access Meandering Way. In fact, Mayor Lessner as many times stated that he would never allow it to happen. But if this cup application is approved as is, there may be no other choice for Twin Creeks. Please don't let this happen. Deny the the second drive and and force them to make a cross access to Twin Creek.
Guest 4 [02:09:29] Thank you. Margi. Is byron. Brian johnson. Brian johnson, Good evening.
Guest 13 [02:09:54] I just wanted to say. Brian Johnson.
Radio Free Mormon [02:09:57] Yeah.
Guest 13 [02:09:57] 481 Windmill Lane, Fairview, Texas. And I've been a resident for over probably 35, 40 years. One time I brought up about an area that could have been used as a park or some kind of a recreational area and it ended up being townhouses and apartments and it's on also a historical site area with an old dam and a bunch of bridges for the railroad. The reason I'm bringing this up is first of all the tower up there that you're talking about allowing them to put up on this building.
Guest 13 [02:10:39] There's jets that fly real low around here. If you had noticed their Learjets land in an airport not too far. I've seen them cross this area many, many times. They're going to put a beacon on top of that. Are they going to be able to tell if a plane flies over? Are they going to be able to miss that point? Is that plane going to miss them? That's just something to consider because this tower is definitely the whole factor of this thing.
Guest 13 [02:11:09] And also traffic was brought up and one guy he brought up, he said think of the traffic flowing that's now almost landlocked and it's, it's just not able to flow with the lanes that we've existing at this present time going to the different locations of Fairview intersection up on Highway 5 and which is now fixing to be pretty soon as you know, brought all the way around on Fairview Parkway off of that. But the congestion is something also consider because who knows how many cars, how many other areas. Like she mentioned that driveway issue, I didn't know about that. I didn't understand that really. But that another church is apparently being built and now they're having to try to figure out an easement for that driveway access to the road.
Guest 13 [02:12:06] So these are just all things to consider. And you know, in the beginning that many years ago is that train smoked down on tracks, went across those trestles that we took out because 18 wheelers kept busting up. You know, it's just something to think about. We used to say Keep it Country. We used to have a sign posted Keep it Country. Now it's a city of Fairview.
Guest 4 [02:12:30] Thank you.
Guest 3 [02:12:37] Is
Guest 13 [02:12:39] hi.
Radio Free Mormon [02:12:41] Oh,
Guest 4 [02:12:44] is Amy Cam. Amy Campbell here? Amy Campbell. Oh, right here in the front.
Guest 13 [02:12:49] Okay.
Guest 4 [02:12:50] Hi, Amy.
Guest 11 [02:12:51] Thank you. Hi. My name is Amy Campbell and I live at 2406 Forest Grove Estates, Allen. One of your neighbors? My family's been in Collin county. We've lived in McKinney and Lovejoy since 1977. So this is our home and we love it here.
Guest 6 [02:13:08] And that's it for the residents.
Guest 11 [02:13:10] So I appreciate your time and consideration for all of the concerns of the community members here this evening. I'm here to talk to you about traffic so there was A Fair and Peers report dated in December of 2022 calculated the generation for the proposed LDS temple assuming that no new driveway access would be introduced for the proposed building. For this analysis, all new traffic volume would use the existing access point at Stacy Road and River Oaks Drive in Allen.
Guest 11 [02:13:41] Trip generation is based on the number of ordinance rooms of each type and the number of seats in each room. Ordinance room types include baptistery ceiling rooms and instruction rooms. Ceiling rooms typically hold 50 seats and instruction rooms hold anywhere from 40 to over 100 depending on the size of the temple. The Fair and Peers report states, quote, the proposed Fairview temple will have two rooms with 40 seats each.
Guest 11 [02:14:09] If that is true, the temple would only require 27 parking spots. In the revised site plan introduced at the LDS open house, it was stated that 94 parking spaces were required. The new site plan still contains 102 spaces after removing the outer row of parking.
Guest 11 [02:14:29] Even the cup application revised on April 11 appears to show a lot more than 80 seats in the temple, listing seats for 160 patrons and 120 workers for a total of 280 seats requiring the 94 parking space spots based on shift descriptions in the CUP application, the peak trips generated for the temple will be at 10am 2pm and 6pm when 60 workers will be changing shifts with 60 other workers and 40 patrons are arriving for a two hour session as another 40 patrons are leaving at the end of their session.
Guest 11 [02:15:09] In conflict with the Fair and Peers report that states, quote, it is expected to generate 64 trips trips and 74 trips in the a.m. and p.m. peak hours respectively. The CUP application data points to 200 trips generated in and out of the temple grounds from Stacy Road and that doesn't account for trips and traffic for the other ordinance rooms as a traffic impact study is required. When 100 new trips are generated The CUP application number points to the necessity of a traffic impact impact study by TxDOT in the town of Fairview. I respectfully asked for an unbiased and current traffic impact study to be conducted and that you require a detailed floor plan with the list of ordinance rooms and seats contained in each room before approving the Cup. Thank you so much.
Guest 3 [02:15:58] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:16:00] All right, everyone, we're making a tough decision, but just because. Just because we probably can't stay too much later, we are going to go ahead and cut from the show. And we just have a few more, some, some also really fascinating extra insider information that we want to share along with some analysis. So we. We hope that you enjoyed some of that coverage. I sure did. Before we jump to the slides, kids, Rebecca and Landon, do y' all want to just give us a summary of what we just saw, what some of the highlights and lowlights for you were, and what. What you. What you think just happened and what you think people should take from this?
Rebecca Villateca [02:16:50] Yeah, I think we'd be happy to. We've watched, as I said, following these temples in these different towns, many of these kinds of meetings. And right before we actually came on the broadcast here, we started getting messages that because of meetings and interactions during the day, we kind of knew there would probably tonight be a continuance, as they talked about at the beginning. And so there were emails sent out to the LDS people that were supposed to show up at the meeting. I mean, there were emails that went far and wide to come in your white shirt, 11th hour. They're getting emails that say, no, you don't need to come now.
Rebecca Villateca [02:17:21] We're getting a continuance until August 6th. So typically you would see at these meetings, as Landon and I have seen before, for more LDS people getting up and kind of in the same vein that you saw here, bearing testimony, telling personal experience, because really, that's all they have to say. There is no legal reason that's on their side for them to allow this temple to be built. And you probably noticed that the residents that got up and spoke, the ones in the green shirts, you can't see them from the back, but I kind of taught him a phrase, follow, obey the laws of the land.
Rebecca Villateca [02:17:52] So their shirts says, you know, keep it country and obey the laws of the lands. You saw them all get up armed with, you know, zoning regulations and safety concerns and, you know, things that were relevant to choosing and deciding whether a building can be built in your town. So it's a really good, I think, microcosm kind of Just to see the two sides and how things operate. But you can continue watching this movie after movie. It's not reality to me. Now this meeting, we can put it in the show notes how you can continue to watch this on the Fairview Town Council website and you can watch it after the fact. So. But I thought it was really good. Landon, what were your takes on it?
Landon [02:18:32] Yeah, there were two takes that I had on that and the first one was the lady who got up and said how decisive this was to the community and asked that they would would vote it down tonight because it's been so divisive for the community.
Landon [02:18:46] And that's what we've seen in all the communities that this is happening to. The church goes in, they break all the rules, they threaten with their lawyers that they're going to sue the city, they're going to sue the city council personally. And then they wonder why people are saying you're unneighborly. And the second one that stood out to me was the bishop when he stood up and said he was concerned about the safety of the children.
Landon [02:19:12] But I couldn't understand this. These same people seem to have sent 13 year old boys out to collect signatures in a town that they had just gone in and caused all of this disrespect and contention. That doesn't seem like a very safe thing. Why aren't the adults out there doing that? Why are they sending the kids out there? Why aren't the Curtin McConkie lawyers out there doing that and the stake president and the big bishops so that they're getting an earful of how disrespectful the town folks feel it is. Instead it's the 13 year old children that are getting an earful. And I had to say what church does that and sends out kids to do adults jobs?
Rebecca Villateca [02:19:54] Yep. No, that's a great point.
McKinney Temple Fight and Church Insider Accounts
John Dehlin [02:19:55] How cringy did the Mormon come across in your opinion, Rebecca?
Rebecca Villateca [02:20:00] Yeah, this was actually nothing compared to other meetings that we've seen. And again, and it's because they were told we've already got a continuance, we don't need to come in full force. But yeah, we've seen crying, we've seen just extreme emotion about the height of the steeple leading up to heaven and the walls and all kinds of the persecution stuff is really cringey.
John Dehlin [02:20:22] And like the bearing your testimony. I've seen past clips where people like give a history of the church and give over views of its doctrine and theology and try and weave in that really High steeples are crucial to temple observance and all that stuff.
Landon [02:20:37] In the planning and zoning meeting, the. The guy that was running the meeting had to say continuously, okay, we understand this is important to you, but please say something relevant to the planning and zoning. Your religious belief has nothing to do with the planning and zoning. Please make it something relevant. And that's what you saw the residents doing, was making it relevant. What we've seen is the church members. They're there because they were assigned to be there. They go in, they cry, they share their testimony about how important the building is to them. But what you don't get is you don't get any facts as to why they should be building such a large building in a residential zone.
Rebecca Villateca [02:21:22] Yep, that's absolutely right.
John Dehlin [02:21:26] And. And what. What about. I hate to say it because it's kind of easy to take shots at the church on this, but if I'm just trying to be really objective. And by the way, I'm a Texan. I grew up in Dallas, and, you know, Houston, Katy, Texas. I'm very proud of my fellow Texans right now. Also, how about freaking Nemo?
Rebecca Villateca [02:21:49] Yeah, yeah, Nemo.
John Dehlin [02:21:51] Freaking Nemo the Mormon with his cameo appearing appearance. Somebody flies Nemo out to freaking Texas to. And he. He didn't.
Guest 11 [02:21:59] He do.
John Dehlin [02:21:59] Didn't he win the. Win the night kind of mic drop, Nemo?
Rebecca Villateca [02:22:02] Oh, I think so.
John Dehlin [02:22:02] I mean, actually, the citizens of the town win the night, but Nemo comes in a close second. We love you, Nemo. Donate to Nemo@donorbox.org Nemo the Mormon. If you love what he did, if you want to support him, also donate to Mormonish. How do people donate to Mormonish?
Rebecca Villateca [02:22:19] We have links to donor box in the show, notes of any of our videos, videos on Mormonish, podcast on YouTube and also our Facebook page. So.
John Dehlin [02:22:25] Okay, and. And while we're at it, rfm, you look very different right now.
Guest 9 [02:22:30] Well, I'm kind of uglier.
John Dehlin [02:22:33] We have Randy Bell in the house. What's up, Randy? What's it with rfm?
Guest 9 [02:22:37] You know, RFM pooped out.
John Dehlin [02:22:40] So here I am. Seriously, Randy, you do a lot with properties.
Guest 7 [02:22:44] Yeah.
Guest 4 [02:22:45] So you.
John Dehlin [02:22:45] You kind of are an expert in. In sort of, I don't know, property law or property analysis.
Guest 9 [02:22:50] Yeah, property law, property economics, the diminution value. The relevant issue here at least was with the Newport Beach Temple was the issue of inverse condemnation, which means if you break the zoning, the citizens and homeowners around, you can sue the city for loss in property values. So that was a Big concern in that deal. I don't know if that's going to come up here.
Guest 3 [02:23:16] Has it landed?
Landon [02:23:17] I have not heard that been mentioned, the loss of value. But there's always that argument that people make, oh, the temple will increase your property value. That may be true in Utah where all the Mormon want to live by the temple. I don't know how true that is outside the morador. Even if it does raise your property values. Those people who are talking who have moved there and lived there for 20 years, what that means is they put pay higher property taxes in order to live next to a temple that's 80, $90 million that pays no property tax.
John Dehlin [02:23:50] So, you know, I also, I don't want to pick on the church, but a Christian church is. I mean, Christ, Randy, you kind of know a little about Jesus. You study him quite a bit.
Guest 9 [02:24:01] I like Jesus.
John Dehlin [02:24:02] Isn't Jesus known as the Prince of Peace?
Guest 9 [02:24:04] Well, I thought so until the member of the church got up. I was about a week ago, Rebecca, where the Fairview Latter Day Saint woman got up and said, if it's a choice between following Jesus or being good neighbors, I'm going to follow Jesus.
Rebecca Villateca [02:24:18] We could play that.
Guest 9 [02:24:19] And I was thinking, I'm not sure
Rebecca Villateca [02:24:22] we have that clip if you want to play that. It's pretty shocking.
Guest 9 [02:24:25] That is mind blowing.
Rebecca Villateca [02:24:27] It is mind blowing.
John Dehlin [02:24:28] Yeah. So I mean just, just to state it clearly, the church loves good people pr. The church historically hates bad pr. I've, I've often said that, that aside from its, you know, obedience to authority, the most sacred thing in Mormonism is good pr. It's obedience to authority, good PR and tithing. And I think those three kind of compete with each other, but those are three super sacred things.
Guest 14 [02:24:54] Why.
John Dehlin [02:24:55] And the church is worth a quarter trillion dollars at this point. They've got to have good PR advice, good consultant support. Why in the world would they be stoking such controversial decisions that breed animosity in local communities? Certainly it's not that important to have a gargantuan steeple or they could find counties that, that allow super large steeples something. But this is just a. And it's, it's certainly. It's going to get worse, right? Like if the church, like, you know, when stuff like this starts happening there, become consultants that will like make money off of like going to a town and saying, the Mormon Church wants to cram this down your throat. Let us help you defeat the Mormon Church. Kind of like lobbying efforts.
Rebecca Villateca [02:25:44] Like that's our goal. We want to Be that person. We want to have a website that says, so a temple is coming to your town. We really do. And I have to say there's a. Another temple on our radar right now, which is Bakersfield, California. And they got really smart right away. Of course, they formed a residence group and they hired not only a lawyer, but a PR firm, because the first thing that happens is that the residents who oppose it are labeled as anti Mormon, as religious bigots. They hired a PR firm. And so they're well ahead of the game. And I will say that's because they're standing on the shoulders of OG Cody and Og Hebert, who's already gone through it, learned everything. These other residents are. Are up to speed very quickly. So
John Dehlin [02:26:23] thank you for that, Rebecca, and thanks to Mormonish and Neima the Mormon for the amazing coverage of this. Y' all make sure and go to Mormon Ish. And there's like 13 episodes.
Guest 5 [02:26:31] Yeah.
Rebecca Villateca [02:26:32] And clips of all these things we've been discussing, like what Randy just said, all kinds of clips from the different meetings.
John Dehlin [02:26:37] And then. And this is also probably unfair, but lots of comments coming in. They're attributing this to Russell M. Nelson, Mormon, current Mormon President Prophet Russell M. Nelson. And they're saying that he has a massive ego.
Guest 2 [02:26:49] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:26:50] And that this is like some big legacy flex.
Guest 3 [02:26:53] And.
John Dehlin [02:26:54] But. But if you think about the Ramy Umtum, if you think about Lehi's dream and the great and spacious building, like Tower Babel. Tower Babel. Like, isn't this the type of thing biblical scripture and Mormon scripture would condemn 100, let alone Bednar, right?
Guest 2 [02:27:11] Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest 9 [02:27:12] 100%. I mean, this is.
Guest 5 [02:27:13] This is.
Guest 9 [02:27:14] I just can't imagine Jesus, you know, talking about the Beatitudes and throwing in there, you know, get the steeple height, you know, sky high. It's just mind bending. And it seems like the church went from the old days where it was about protecting the good name of the church in air quotes, to now. We have so much money, we don't care what you think. We're going to bulldoze our way through this thing.
John Dehlin [02:27:37] And I don't want to get to you, Rebecca, because I know you have some really good insider information. The last thing I'll say say is the bishop talk. The Mormon bishop talking about protecting the children is particularly ironic or dark or twisted when we know that for so many years the Mormon Church has covered up child sexual abuse. And bishops are on the front line. Mormon bishops are on the front line of covering up thousands, if not tens of thousands of cases of child sex abuse so much that it torpedoed the Boy Scouts of America. The Mormon church voluntarily offered, what, $250 million in settlement and that was rejected
Guest 9 [02:28:15] as the number's gonna go bigger.
John Dehlin [02:28:17] Yeah. So, like, for the church to hide behind, protecting the children as a justification for building this huge temple with the big steeple, it just. It's just kind of gross. It's gross. So, Rebecca, you have multiple inside sources and there's. It sounds like Curt McConkey has been on the ground in McKinney and we want to hear all about it.
Rebecca Villateca [02:28:38] Yeah, this is true. And I will say, to Randy's point, there is no place in the scriptures where the height is used in a positive way. It usually comes out as negative. And I will say I've thought about this and Landon and I have talked about this, and I believe it is in the past. President Hinckley era with temples. There are articles where they took pride in working with communities. Especially I'm thinking of a temple that was in Tokyo, you know, meeting with people and having it blend in, being a good neighbor. That was pride for the President Hinckley era temples. Now you have Nelson announcing them 20 at a time.
Rebecca Villateca [02:29:10] And we just feel like it's finally catching up and it's not going to stop. It's going to continue and you're going to see the situation over and over. And eventually people will start taking note. As John mentioned, reporters, more national coverage. And this is what we've always hoped. You know, one temple. Okay, weird. A one off, two, whatever. There is a big picture here, and we can't understand the reason why the PR could be so good. When a temple comes to town, you could work with residents. It really could be the blessing that they describe it as. It's so funny. In every town, they say the temple will be a blessing. The residents will see, you'll see. Eventually we may have to do all this stuff to you, but it's going to be a blessing.
Landon [02:29:52] And Cody and eating your vegetables.
Rebecca Villateca [02:29:54] Like eating your vegetables. That's right. Cody and Heber, who've been fighting this so long, their teams are. Their towns are never going to recover. Neighbor against neighbor. I think you heard one of the residents say, like Landon mentioned, please, let's end this. Because I'm looking at my neighbor in a whole different way and I can't understand why you're trying to do this to me. And she doesn't understand why I don't see the blessing. You know, it's just pitting person against person, neighbor against neighbor. So. So, yeah, very quickly at the end, I thought we'd go into the. This last night, somebody sent me a letter that was sent out to leadership in McKinney.
Rebecca Villateca [02:30:24] This would be bishops and stake presidents and Relief Society presidents. It said, please come to this meeting at a church building. We are going to have two Curtin McConkey lawyers talk to us. We are also going to have a PR rep who's made statements before in McKinney, and we are going to have a.
Rebecca Villateca [02:30:42] Oh, an area rep that's going to talk. So the letters on the screen, we don't have to read the whole thing. That's just inviting people to a meeting. All of a sudden, all of a sudden I start getting information from a couple people that are at this meeting and they're paraphrasing what is being said. So I think we have a couple slides, John, you can probably read them. I've written down who said it. I have some pictures. Again, these are people at this meeting. And this is paraphrased information from a PR rep in Area 70 and Curtin McConkie lawyers, all in preparation for what we're seeing tonight.
Rebecca Villateca [02:31:19] They were there to prepare them because at this point, they didn't know they were going to get a continuance. They thought they'd be fighting for their lives. They had invited people to send 15,000 emails to the city manager of Fairview within 24 hours. And they told them to wear their white shirts.
Guest 12 [02:31:36] Church.
Rebecca Villateca [02:31:37] And now they're coaching the leadership to coach the people who would come to the meeting. So maybe just go through these.
Guest 4 [02:31:43] Church would use.
Rebecca Villateca [02:31:43] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:31:44] Global membership.
Guest 5 [02:31:45] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:31:45] To send $15,000. 15,000 emails in a local matter. It reminds me of Prop 8.
Rebecca Villateca [02:31:52] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:31:52] Where the church, with its millions of dollars, decides it's going to override the. The. The rule. The will of a sovereign US State. That was gross. Regardless, I mean, yeah, libertarians should be up in arms really quickly. I just have to share one comment. Thanks to 7892 Kirby, who writes my favorite podcasters in one studio. I didn't know you had a podcast, Randy Bell.
Guest 11 [02:32:14] I guess you do.
Guest 9 [02:32:15] Well, I do, but I've never used said the word Mormon once on it.
John Dehlin [02:32:19] Anyway, my favorite podcast is in one studio. Great work and this whole temple debacle. Rebecca and Landon, y' all really are making a difference. So thanks 7, 8, 9 Kirby for that.
Guest 4 [02:32:29] That.
John Dehlin [02:32:29] Okay, let's go ahead and go to. And I love it, Rebecca, that you've got people on the ground, insiders I was surprised.
Rebecca Villateca [02:32:36] I didn't know that I had people on the ground that would be at this kind of an elite leadership meeting. But I think. I think the point is that even faithful Mormon are starting to say, I don't feel good about this. I don't feel right about what's happening. Can somebody maybe from the outside reach in and try to help everybody see reason? And. And this is how I took it. These people that were reaching out to me just to say this doesn't seem right.
John Dehlin [02:33:01] Okay, so here are some of the comments. So in Area 70, said in this meeting, only the Church of Jesus Christ has the answers to all of the world's problems, and those answers are found in the temple. Now, that's a little bit of hubris, I'd say.
Guest 9 [02:33:18] Something that's over selling and under delivery.
Landon [02:33:21] I challenge you to name one word. World problem that was solved by the church, and especially one that was solved in the temple.
John Dehlin [02:33:30] Oh, my gosh, that's rich.
Guest 9 [02:33:31] I appreciate his optimism.
John Dehlin [02:33:35] Okay, so what's the grade on that one? Is that a. Not a good grade? Okay. All right, the next one is. This is from Curtin McConkey, attorney. Nothing will bless the Saints more than a temple here. Nothing. Lots of changes are going on behind the scenes, even in the last few weeks. Church is starting to pivot. We'll turn up the heat if we need to. What the. That's a threat.
Rebecca Villateca [02:34:04] No, I know.
John Dehlin [02:34:04] We'll turn up the heat if we need to, but we don't want to do it more than we need to.
Rebecca Villateca [02:34:10] Exactly.
John Dehlin [02:34:11] So just the right heat.
Rebecca Villateca [02:34:12] Exactly.
John Dehlin [02:34:13] For Jesus's law firm.
Rebecca Villateca [02:34:14] Paraphrased. These are not direct quotes. We should be clear. These are people attending the meeting that are just taking notes and saying, in general. This is. This is the kind of tone. And this is what they said from these people's opinion that were at the meeting.
John Dehlin [02:34:28] Yeah. Lawyers, man. Lawyers. Okay. I love lawyers. RFM over there. All right, next one is from a Curt McCaughey attorney. If the city decides to play along. Okay, that's gross.
Guest 3 [02:34:42] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:34:42] If the city decides to play along, this will be a short game. If not, it will be a long game. But rest assured, we will win, and there will be a wonderful temple in your midst before long. What is this? We will win. What is that? Why are you laughing, Randy?
Guest 9 [02:34:59] Well, I work with attorneys every day. That's what I do. And I've just never seen such profound arrogance.
John Dehlin [02:35:06] I mean, Rebecca.
Rebecca Villateca [02:35:09] Yeah. I don't know. I've seen these slides several times. Because I made them. And I still am shaking my head about that, you know, but of course, he has to encourage the people. Because I'm at the point where I believe these members, the common members, are being manipulated by church, you know, upper leadership in the institution. A lot of people, as I understood it at this meeting, said, what am I supposed to say to my neighbor? I don't really understand the justification for this. I know you're telling me, telling me to defend the temple, but even I don't get it. Can you tell me something I can use? So even some of these leaders are starting to not understand what they're being asked to do or why.
John Dehlin [02:35:44] Theodore J. Whoopee writes, it's embarrassing how the church is handling this. They're simply acting like pompous bullies. Thank you for covering this. Thank you for the comments. Theater Shay Whoopi.
Landon [02:35:56] It's funny to see the difference between how they act. Act in the public meeting and how they act in their private meeting and what they're telling their members and. But this leaks out, and you can see why the community is concerned and why they're saying we're being bullied because they're hearing that. That the church is making these threats. They literally told them in the meeting that they introduced the temple. We have a recording of the lawyer telling them that Rlupi allows them to do this and that there'll be lawsuits if they introduce. They don't go along with it.
Guest 5 [02:36:28] Right.
John Dehlin [02:36:29] All right. I'm 54. Y' all are either. Y' all are within 10 years of my age, plus or minus. Quick firing round. Question. Is this the church we grew up in or is the church changed? Rebecca?
Rebecca Villateca [02:36:41] I don't know. I can't say because I feel without the Internet, without knowing the church at large, I knew a little church, you know, I knew my young men, young women group. I knew friends and family. I knew activities.
Guest [02:36:52] Activities.
Rebecca Villateca [02:36:53] I did not know what was going on on the largest.
John Dehlin [02:36:54] I'm asking you to speculate.
Rebecca Villateca [02:36:55] Yeah, no, I am. I don't think so, honestly.
John Dehlin [02:36:58] You're saying not the church?
Rebecca Villateca [02:36:59] I don't think so. They didn't have the lawyers. They did not have the global presence and manipulation. I don't think so. I think they're operation.
John Dehlin [02:37:07] What about the hubris?
Rebecca Villateca [02:37:08] Oh, yeah. No, I don't think that existed either.
John Dehlin [02:37:10] So the church has gotten more prideful.
Rebecca Villateca [02:37:11] I. Absolutely. Well, how can you not be prideful when you have more money than God?
John Dehlin [02:37:15] Yeah.
Rebecca Villateca [02:37:16] Even though you say it's for God,
John Dehlin [02:37:17] you have that money you need to quote me when I say that. That's my quote, Randy. Church of our youth or different church.
Guest 9 [02:37:23] There are two Mormon churches, Church A and Church B. Church A for me was Southern California. Very mellow, very easygoing. The kids from all over the high school came to our dances. It was just fun. Church B is Salt Lake City. Frankly, we didn't pay attention to them much, but they're really making their presence known. And we're finding out that they're really quite arrogant again.
John Dehlin [02:37:46] So always been. Thanks, Randy. Thanks, Randy. That was good. Always been this way or different church.
Landon [02:37:53] Now I think the corporate church has always been this way. We just weren't aware of it because the. There weren't people like you doing this kind of stuff.
John Dehlin [02:38:00] Are you like you guys back?
Landon [02:38:02] And we can see in Nauvoo what happens. We see every community they move into because they're inflexible and they must have their way. And it's the same thing we're seeing here. So from that sense, it's the same church. I think the people of the church, I think the church itself, to the regular person, has changed. And I think the fact that we have people calling us who are active members saying, I don't feel good about this, that they're seeing that it's more impacting them, that they've gotten more political than they have in the past.
Guest 2 [02:38:31] Got it.
John Dehlin [02:38:32] All right, next quote from Curtin McConkey attorney. This guy's going to go home and people are going to tell me, you should have seen your quote quoted. You were anonymously quoted.
Rebecca Villateca [02:38:41] And I think this quote is when they start trying to tell the leadership how to instruct their people what to say at this meeting. Because it hasn't gone well at the other meetings, especially the planning and Zoning board, where there were, you know, too many tears, too many heartfelt stories. The area rep even had to get up and say, I think we've heard enough from the LDS because he could read the room. So now they're trying to tell them how not to do that and how to do something else.
John Dehlin [02:39:03] All right, here it is. Try and this is a curtain of McKy attorney. Try and take a certain piece of the temple structure, the spire or the height of the walls, and make it part of your testimony. Wait, is it testimony Authentic?
Rebecca Villateca [02:39:17] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:39:17] Or is it coach? I mean, I guess when I was a kid, my parents told me what to say.
Radio Free Mormon [02:39:21] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:39:21] So I guess this is on brand, but that's a little weird to see your testimony. But let me tell you what to say. I mean, that's very Mormon, actually. I take it back. All right. And make it part of your testimony Tuesday night at the city council meeting tonight. Don't just bear your testimony of the temple, but specifically the spire of the temple or the height of the temple or the height of the temple.
Guest 7 [02:39:45] What?
Rebecca Villateca [02:39:47] Yeah, I think I said it twice. Yeah, I mean, these are emails that went out to you, to everybody, make sure you say it's so important. But we're not making this up. We're really not. And then this next slide.
John Dehlin [02:39:57] I'm sorry, next slide. Kurt McConkey, attorney says coaching will be available tonight after the meeting. What does he mean by that?
Rebecca Villateca [02:40:05] Coaching on how to say the right thing. But of course, I had to put up a Rocky. Well, you know, some people go home and, you know, it's the Fairview people that are there. But, you know, if you put the slide up, it's like, Rocky. Talk about the spire. Rocky. You gotta mention the walls. It's like, what are they doing? Doing.
Guest 3 [02:40:23] I know.
Guest 9 [02:40:23] Well said.
Guest 12 [02:40:24] I know.
Rebecca Villateca [02:40:25] Oh, my God.
Landon [02:40:26] Joseph, win.
Guest 2 [02:40:27] That's right.
Guest 12 [02:40:27] Win.
Rebecca Villateca [02:40:28] You can do it.
Guest 3 [02:40:28] Come on.
John Dehlin [02:40:30] Y' all doing your Mickey impression.
Rebecca Villateca [02:40:32] Come on, Ry. Come on, everybody do it.
Landon [02:40:39] Ain't gonna be no rematch.
John Dehlin [02:40:44] All right, sorry. We have really got up the rail.
Rebecca Villateca [02:40:46] We are jumping the shark.
Guest 5 [02:40:47] Here we go.
John Dehlin [02:40:49] All the gen zers are millennials are
Rebecca Villateca [02:40:51] like, what are they talking about?
John Dehlin [02:40:52] I have no idea what movie. My son just told me last week he saw Rocky for the first time. So, anyway, love you, Winston. Okay, next quote from a local church rep. We've already made accommodations for traffic and lighting and are requesting a height variance of both the structures and the steeple. Okay, what's interesting about that?
Rebecca Villateca [02:41:13] Well, from their perspective, they keep saying we've made connection concessions.
John Dehlin [02:41:16] They say that in that voice?
Rebecca Villateca [02:41:18] Are you kidding? There's got to be another movie quote. You come to my town, you tell me. I mean, that's the Godfather, right? That's what we're channeling now. You come to my house.
Guest 11 [02:41:26] Right.
Rebecca Villateca [02:41:26] And yet they say they can make concessions, but that's their point of view. They belong there. They will be there. God's on their side. They deserve to be there. We'll make some concessions for the locals. They do not see the point of view of the other people.
John Dehlin [02:41:38] Exactly. What did I do to you? Okay. You like that? I do. I did. Bill's not the only person.
Rebecca Villateca [02:41:50] Good.
John Dehlin [02:41:51] Only Bill real does imitations. The Mormon Godfather.
Rebecca Villateca [02:41:55] The Mormon Godfather. People actually might say he's the Mormon Godfather. The post Mormon godfather again, they just, you know, they believe they belong there. They believe God has ordained it to be there. The prophet has said that it's going to be there. And so they'll make some concessions, but. But it's going to be there. No question.
John Dehlin [02:42:11] Okay, people are. The comments are going crazy. All right, next one. Kurt McConkey, attorney. Architects use height to inspire, to draw our eyes heavenward. That's why our temples must be so tall. The highest form of worship happens in the temple, so it must be done in a large building.
Rebecca Villateca [02:42:28] Yeah. And again, we played many quotes. We've read many quotes. Exactly. We can play that again.
John Dehlin [02:42:33] It is.
Rebecca Villateca [02:42:34] Is. That is not real. That is not true.
Closing Thoughts and Looking Ahead
John Dehlin [02:42:37] All right, so there is another temple coming up. Bakersfield, California.
Guest 5 [02:42:41] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:42:41] 30, 000 square feet. 58 spire temple. That's not 100 and whatever, right?
Rebecca Villateca [02:42:46] No, it's not very big. But again, they have some wonderful renderings that they've put out. Again, they're doing a GoFundMe and they're a little retirement community. And that temple is just smack right against. I mean, you look out your window, that's all you're gonna see. And they're the ones that have hired a PR firm firm, very smart and a lawyer because you have to do that right away.
John Dehlin [02:43:04] And then I love data and I love this slide. It's a plot.
Rebecca Villateca [02:43:08] I want to say that just someone, a woman sent this to me today. She goes, I love to crunch numbers. I like data. I've made this and I thought, this is amazing. You can probably take us through.
John Dehlin [02:43:17] The X axis is square footage of the temple and on the Y axis it is height. Is that including the steeple?
Landon [02:43:26] Yeah, that's the steeple.
Rebecca Villateca [02:43:26] Yes. And all the little blue dots are existing temples. And then she did pull out the ones that we're talking about today. But the main thing to notice is down on the left at the bottom, that's a fairly large size house. It would be 30ft, 6,000 square feet. This gives you in data form, you can see how much larger these temples are than a regular house. I mean, people just can't comprehend they're so big.
Landon [02:43:50] And you can see that the steeple heights are getting larger, taller and taller and taller as time goes by. The same square footage, one from past or down lower. It's like they're building them intentionally higher and higher.
Guest 5 [02:44:02] Yeah.
Landon [02:44:03] And I think that's the Russell M. Nelson effect.
Rebecca Villateca [02:44:06] I do too.
Guest 9 [02:44:07] 100 correlates statistically with the SEC holdings.
Landon [02:44:11] Yes.
Rebecca Villateca [02:44:11] Oh, such a good Point. That's right.
John Dehlin [02:44:14] So people are. Why don't you guys talk for a bit? People are asking for an update on the meeting.
Rebecca Villateca [02:44:18] Oh, we can go back to the meeting. That's totally fine.
John Dehlin [02:44:21] If y' all have any final kind of summative things.
Rebecca Villateca [02:44:24] Yeah, I just, you know, I'm glad that everybody got to hear some of these comments tonight because it really does give you this little window and shine a spotlight into these little, I want to say battles. I don't necessarily mean battles that are going on in all these towns that we've been following. We have all kinds of clips from all of these meetings on Mormonish podcast, and it just shows that the Latter Day Saints, they really, truly believe that the temple is going to bless these communities and they'll do anything to make it happen. It's kind of the killing Laban effect. Right? You're going to do whatever it takes, and everyone will sort it out later.
Rebecca Villateca [02:44:57] It'll be fine. You'll see why we had to do what we had to do. But as Landon brought up, this has been the tactic for centuries, a century and a half. So it's sad to see the members manipulated and feel this persecution complex. And it's sad to see the collateral damage of wonderful residents in every single town. I mean, we were with. With the neighbors in Cody, Heber, Lone Mountain and McKinney, and these are wonderful people. I can't say it enough. Love, y'.
Guest 7 [02:45:25] All.
John Dehlin [02:45:25] I just. I just tried to log in and you'll. You'll find this amusing. It says, sorry, this webinar is now full and it won't let anybody in.
Guest 9 [02:45:34] Oh, no.
John Dehlin [02:45:35] I did share it on the Internet.
Rebecca Villateca [02:45:36] We're out.
John Dehlin [02:45:37] So we have over a thousand. Yeah, somebody just said. Somebody gave a talk so good that there was a standing ovation. So y' all are gonna have to go back and watch the rest of them, because I'm sure there's gonna be really good ones. Landon, any final thoughts from you?
Landon [02:45:53] You know, to me, we've heard that there's going to be a continuance. I think that's probably, from the city's point, the right thing to do. Even though I think the church, it's. It's a trick. I don't think they're going to come back with a small building rendering and say, we're going to change the size. We heard in the leadership meeting, the lawyer specifically said, the brethren have told us that we are not changing the height or the footprint of the temple, that it's necessary to maintain RLUPI if they give up in one community, they're going to have to give up in others.
Landon [02:46:27] However, as he said at the beginning of the meeting, two of the councilmen were missing. It takes a super majority to pass. Without those two people, there'd be no way it could pass. Pass which then could put the city in a, in a bit of a bind. If they, you know, if they turned it down and there wasn't enough people to vote to. To approve it, I think there could be some legal action. So I think they had no choice but to. To, to give that. But it's going to be a rough couple, two months in that city.
Guest 5 [02:46:55] Yep.
John Dehlin [02:46:57] Love it. Thank you, Landon. Randy.
Guest 9 [02:46:59] Well, Nemo, I think, gets the trophy for the most articulate speech of the night. The favorite.
John Dehlin [02:47:05] Heard that.
Guest 3 [02:47:06] We heard.
Guest 9 [02:47:06] Yes. Well said. And I really have a respect for the people of Texas. I mean, they came out and were very articulate, very prepared, and with my experience with the Newport beach temple, they had the same thing where they had a very high steeple. And they did reduce it, by the way. But the people of.
John Dehlin [02:47:28] Is it Fairview?
Guest 4 [02:47:29] Yeah.
Guest 9 [02:47:30] They gotta watch this carefully because what they did in Newport beach is they frankly lied about or had a mistake about the height and a guy went out with a sexton and actually measured it and called him out on the lie and. Or the misinformation and they reduced the size. So I don't know why they can't reduce the size here. They've done it before.
Landon [02:47:47] Well, I think it's because it's so large. It's so over the regulations. You know, you heard them say 48ft is the highest. We're going to give you for roof the Building 64. You'd have to completely redesign the building. It would have to be a different building.
Guest 9 [02:48:01] Well, it needs to be a different building.
Guest 8 [02:48:03] Yeah.
Guest 7 [02:48:04] So.
Guest 2 [02:48:05] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:48:06] All right. Well, I'll just say as a closing thought that if you don't like the church and you don't want it to succeed, you're probably cheering on the church's current temple steeple push. Because clearly the Mormon Church, you know, the reason why the, the LDS Church got rid of the term Mormon Mormon is because they product tested or market tested the value of the brand name and it was a toxic brand name. Plus we owned all the, all the SEO stories and all the other Mormon podcasters. We already owned the SEO. It was a toxic brand for the church.
Rebecca Villateca [02:48:43] There is that.
John Dehlin [02:48:45] So the church Jefferson did. And, and so they're. What's the point of Doing a brand reboot. You know, what rebrand would Jesus do do? What's the point of doing an expensive, excruciating rebrand? Lose all that SEO and then engage in tactics like this that just destroy the goodwill. And I'm sure they're not going to stop. I mean there's a couple hundred temples yet to be built, so they're just going to go back to the drawing board and try to find other sneaky, creative ways to do what they're doing. And all I'll say is, is LDS church, the people who hate you are cheering you on. So if you want, you know, if you want to reward your enemies, keep doing exactly what you're doing with Mormon temples. Am I wrong?
Landon [02:49:32] Bingo.
Rebecca Villateca [02:49:33] No, you're not wrong. And I think about the residents that we work with, none of them knew much about Mormon. They do now. And what? No, really? And, and what do you like? The people in Cody were church going folk. So are these Mormon. We'll work this out within a month. Who are these people? And not in a positive way. And they're never going to forget this. They are never going to have a positive opinion because of how they've been treated.
John Dehlin [02:49:57] One of the, one of the most common comments I saw was I feel sorry for the missionaries in McKinney and Fairview. The Mormon missionaries. Can you imagine knocking on doors right now? I mean you're generating ill will will. And then, and then these temples are going to just be these big bright eyesores and, and the more that the church refuses to like apologize for its racism, fix its, its misogyny and you know, be anti LGBT and then not protect children, but instead protect the perpetrators. These are going to just be monuments to bigotry and abuse these temples. And so it just in all the ways the Mormon church just. You need better consultants. You need a better law firm, you need better consultants. Hire us. I think it's Rebecca. Randy Landon, rfm. Nemo, I think we would give you some pretty good advice. I think we do pretty good at pr.
Landon [02:50:56] Yeah.
Guest 9 [02:50:57] When your game plan is to put in more temples than there are fire hydrants, that's not a good game plan.
John Dehlin [02:51:04] All right, well, I want to thank Radio Free Mormon, our rfm, for being a part of this. He's, he's over there taking a nap. We burnt him out. I want to thank Nemo the Mormon. He helped co produce this episode, helped us put some of the slides together. But most importantly, I want to thank. Oh, and Randy, you're freaking amazing. We're really glad you could join us for a little bit. Check out Randy's episode on Heaven's Gate just a couple episodes ago. It's doing really well.
Guest 6 [02:51:29] Good.
Guest 2 [02:51:29] Yeah, you.
John Dehlin [02:51:29] You were fantastic there, as always. And. Yeah. And then finally, I want to give a huge thanks and a shout out to Rebecca and Landon for Mormonish podcast. You guys are tearing it up.
Rebecca Villateca [02:51:40] Well, thank you for having us on. Our goal from the beginning, as has just been to share the big picture of all these temples, to hope that everyone can do better. So, like I said to Landon, today, we're going on the big show. Oh, my gosh. We finally made it. Like Johnny Carson.
Guest 3 [02:51:56] Exactly.
John Dehlin [02:51:56] So for those of you in Gen Z, Johnny Carson used to be.
Rebecca Villateca [02:51:59] He used to be. No, but again, we appreciate your support of all podcasters and all platforms and just letting people, you know, talk, especially about really important topics.
Guest 3 [02:52:08] So.
Rebecca Villateca [02:52:08] Right back at you.
John Dehlin [02:52:09] Yeah, and thanks to you, Landon as well.
Landon [02:52:11] Yeah, I hope people get excited after watching this. These are interesting city meetings to attend and to listen to.
John Dehlin [02:52:17] It's like popcorn.
Rebecca Villateca [02:52:19] It is, it is.
John Dehlin [02:52:20] It's like a basketball or football game. What's the latest city?
Guest 2 [02:52:22] Exactly.
Rebecca Villateca [02:52:23] And they're recorded. You can go to Lone Mountain and you can go to some of the other ones. And these are all recorded on city websites and. And you can see this play out. It's pretty fascinating.
John Dehlin [02:52:33] I'm being told that the last speaker is up and then they're going to be ending. There's a final shot, I guess, of the last speaker. Anyway, thanks. A couple quick favors. Please donate to donorbox.org nemothemormon to help Nemo pay for his trip and to reward him for his courage. Please donate to. Is it donorbox.org Mormonish?
Rebecca Villateca [02:52:55] Yeah, it's like that. Or just go to our show Notes. We have links on our YouTube channel and also our Facebook page.
John Dehlin [02:53:00] Okay. And please subscribe to Mormonish YouTube channel. Please subscribe to Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel. And if you want, subscribe here to Mormon Stories podcast channel. Like this episode. Go and watch all the Mormon episodes covering this. Continue to tune in to Mormonish. Also, please subscribe to Mormon Discussions YouTube channel, which is Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon. They do Mormonism live every Wednesday night at 6:00pm 6, 10, 15, 20 Mountain PM Mountain Time. Also, there is the Mormon newscast every Monday night, Utah time at 6pm That I am truly truant. Am I truant?
Rebecca Villateca [02:53:43] No. No. You're just like leaving him wait, wanting more. Because when you do show up, it's like, oh, My gosh. John is here, right? So it's better leave him on.
John Dehlin [02:53:51] Slacker is what I am. I've been a little busy, but I'm not going to talk about that right now. Anyway, please subscribe like to all these channels. Please donate support donate to Radio Free Mormon and Mormon discussions. They need your support as well. All good nonprofits and we want to thank our donors for their support that allows this space to be possible and allows us to collaborate. Also, huge thanks to Maven for doing the moderating today and her production. Thanks to Julia for her time codes and show notes, her shorts and for her co production of episodes, co hosting and. And she gives me little tips behind the scene that are really valuable. Big thanks to Brooklyn for her editing and our board of directors. We love this space. It couldn't be cooler. It's just getting cooler. Isn't our space cool?
Rebecca Villateca [02:54:44] It's cool.
John Dehlin [02:54:45] Don't we have a really cool community? I hate to say it, the church kicked me out. So, I mean, it's not my fault that I'm not Mormon anymore. But I have to say, I'm still Mormon. I'm not LDS anymore. I'm having a lot more fun than I did when I was in the church. It's just true.
Guest 4 [02:55:00] I don't know.
John Dehlin [02:55:01] Yeah, yeah. They say wickedness never was happiness, but I don't know. Are we wicked? Are we more righteous?
Rebecca Villateca [02:55:06] Pretty happy.
Guest 9 [02:55:07] I think you're doing the good stuff. Just telling the truth.
John Dehlin [02:55:10] All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormonish Radio Free Mormon, Nemo Mormon and all the other shows. Take care, everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Thumbnail Credits: Photo plublished in Texas Monthly, photograph taken by Justin Clemons
One Response
Note the magnificent height of the Manhattan Temple’s steeple? (Not!)
It’s almost as if the Church DOESN’T see New Yorkers as rubes that they can impress and mow over with their fabulous wealth and stable of lawyers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_New_York_Temple