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one thing they have complained about is the fact that we do park on the street. We heard it, we have continued to hear it. So what did we do? We took action to mitigate this problem. We bought the house next door. But before we bought it we asked Planning, Building whether it would be possible to build a parking lot as proposed. And again, we see by their granting us a Use Permit their answer was yes. So we acted accordingly. "One of the arguments that was brought up... we would increase the size of our facility. And as mentioned by Planning, we have no intention of increasing the building, and in fact we know we would not get a permit to increase the size of that building. We have no intention to increase the size, nor to tear down the house, a member of our organization lives in that house. One of the restrictions for doing that would be the fact that we don't have Code wise a parking lot as needed for that type of expansion. "Another argument that was raised was in regard to the evening use of the meetings. It is true that we do have meetings there, assigned three nights a week, one for each congregation and we meet other nights of the week, and all day Sunday, and we have a brief meeting in the morning every week. Yet, we have taken action. We have changed the time of our meetings. We used to start at 7:30. We have now changed that to 7:00. They get out a half hour earlier. We did that as a reaction to the thought they we were there too late. " Mr. Vassallo referred to the culvert and CEQA. He said the drainage ditch on the rear of their property was like every other sewage canal in the City. He said covering that ditch would not have an impact on the neighbors. Mr. Vassallo said initially they only wanted to span the drainage ditch which would not have disrupted the neighborhood, but this time the City had suggested the box culvert. He said they were willing to just span the ditch at this time and let the City address the issue of a box culvert at a later date if it so desired. Mr. Vassallo said their original plans had smaller setbacks landscaping throughout the parking lot, but the City placed restrictions on the Use Permit and had them move the parking to the middle and add landscaping around the perimeter. He said the landscapers they contacted said it would look better to widen the parking area, have smaller setbacks, and allow room for trees and landscaping throughout the lot, which might even allow for a few more parking spaces. He said this configuration was similar to other churches in the area. Mr. Vassallo said, "Very recently a church on Madison Avenue and Iris... there was recently some very significant expansion approved. We might say because of that expansion, building a gymnasium, adding a parking lot and enlarging the size of their school, they actually have contributed to the problem of off street parking. They have less parking space overall now. That has had an impact on our street, on Iris Street, where we do live... there is overflow from them in addition to us. Weare not the only REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO. 55 JUNE2,1997 MINUTES Page No. 374 PAGE 18