The Virginia Beach Planning Commission voted 6-5 two weeks ago against a Buddhist group’s application to hold religious services in a house in Pungo, arguing that the residential-zoned property should not be used for any other purpose.
The decision came after three zoning complaints from neighbors forced the monks to apply for a city conditional use permit. The monks are still prepared to hold Sunday services on the advice of their attorney, Tariq Louka of Stallings & Bischoff, who saw the commission’s decision as a violation of constitutionally-protected religious freedom.
The monks bought the house last year for $950,000 after the city pressured them to leave a building in Kempsville that was demolished for road construction. The new temple was purchased with help from local Buddhists and money from other temples in Saigon, Vietnam. Virginia Beach resident Samantha Nezgoda, who became a Buddhist after visiting the Kempsville temple to perform an insurance physical on the Buddhist master, said that the city originally supported the monks’ move.
Commission member Don Horsley voted against the permit, saying that it was land use, and not “an issue of a church”, that drove his decision.
“That was the only question we had. The property is zoned residential, and our feeling is that it should remain residential,” said Horsley, who lives near the site.
The staff of the planning commission studied the temple and recommended that the permit should be approved. Faith Christie, the city planner who prepared the study, added that the majority of religious facilities in Virginia Beach are in residential-zoned neighborhoods. Attorney Tariq Louka said the commission had made a flawed decision that disregarded both zoning law and religious freedom. The planning commission’s recommendation will be reviewed by the full city council in August.
The right to establish a religious building in a residential zone is protected by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law saying that “no government shall impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution, unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person, assembly, or institution.”
By Taylor Harwin, Port Folio Weekly
