Los Gatos Weekly-Times

First Baptist will draw up plans to remodel its house

By Clarence Cromwell

The Monte Sereno City Council sent First Baptist Church back to the drawing board Dec. 17, when the church sought permission to build a new house at the rear of its property.

The church wanted the city to change its use permit so it could build a 2,600-square-foot, two-story pastoral residence on the same property where its congregation worships and runs a church daycare service. The congregation prefers to have Pastor Roger McCarty and his family live in the community he serves, said church member Beth Jendricks, but housing is out of the pastor's reach.

The idea won staff support.

Planner Brian Loventhal recommended approval of the residence, saying it would screen noise from the daycare center's playground and would ward off nighttime trespassers. He added that the house should not be allowed to become a church facility, part of the daycare center or a rental unit, but should be used only as a parsonage.

The council wanted to know why the church can't use the parsonage it has now. The building is full of church offices and classrooms that the council said can be moved back into the church.

Former mayor Nancy Hobbs, a resident of Kavin Lane, near the church, wrote a letter to the council saying she's concerned that the church will add the building and later decide not to use it as a parsonage, as was done with the original parsonage building.

Carril Court resident David Butler also said the original parsonage should be used. "That's a nice solid house up there, and it's been there a lot of years," he said.

Butler also complained that the church is sometimes a noisy neighbor, pestering residents for blocks around with the sounds of playing children, people talking in the parking lot and the engines of diesel buses.

Beth Jendricks, a church member and project manager of the new parsonage, said the church looked into using the older parsonage building, but that would require "a total redo" of the building, and she's not sure the pastor would have enough privacy, in the end.

"You have to ask yourself if you would want to live like that," she told the council.

"I think there would be some benefit to having the pastor on the property," councilmember Joel Gambord said, explaining that the pastor could assure compliance with the city's use permit, if he lived there.

But Gambord added, "I could not support a two-story house at all." The tall house would impose itself in neighbor's views, he said.

Suzanne Jackson and Jack Lucas agreed with Gambord. Dorothea Bamford said she'd hate to destroy the lawn, also a play area for the church daycare, by allowing a house.

Jendricks agreed to come back with plans for remodeling the existing building, and the council moved forward the decision to its Feb. 4 meeting.