Jonathan Simons - Can the Government Take Your Church’s Land?

Pastor Jonathan Simons of SouthLake Church joins Lars to discuss the Lake Oswego School District’s move to use eminent domain to acquire church-owned property. Should a school district be able to seize private land simply because it wants it for expansion?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey, welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails. We'll do that in just a moment. But I want to first talk to Jonathan Simons, who is a pastor at South Lake Church in Lake Oswego. Jonathan, welcome to the program and thanks so much for taking the time.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hey, Lars, thanks for uh for having me. Uh excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

In the interest of full disclosure, I've always told people that I think eminent domain is something that's absolutely necessary to the operation of the United States. However, do I think it's overused by the government? Do I think the government frequently goes out and tries to take away land or property from people without really good cause, but simply because a given government wants the property. In fact, some of the most famous cases, the Kilo case, went all the way to the Supreme Court to determine can a uh a government simply take a piece of property from individual owners because it would return more property taxes to the government that's taking the land. And I thought that one was especially ridiculous. But yours comes very close to being as bad. You're literally in a church that you and your congregation bought not too long ago, and now the local school board is trying to tear that property away from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I mean, yeah, you're basically summarizing it correctly, but I do want to say just from the jump that we don't really we don't see the district or the school board as enemies. We have a long history of partnering with school districts. I mean, we're a church across the street from a high school, and ultimately we we felt like we purchased our our home uh to serve the community and serve the school district and serve the serve the students of the high school that's across the street.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Well, I understand you want to stay on good terms with them, and I have no objection to that. I think that's a good idea. But what what is the reason that the school district has decided that it absolutely has to have your property that you just finished purchasing, which the school district could have purchased on the private marketplace at the same time you did, couldn't they?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah, yeah. Actually, they were one of the competing offers uh uh in the open market. Ultimately, the seller chose to uh enter into an agreement with us to purchase the property. We went through with it, purchased the property, uh, we began gathering there, we began hosting, you know, ministry events and uh began serving the community, and then we invested a significant amount or are investing a significant amount of resources uh to uh continue to invest into the community and and it hopefully, God willing, it being our forever home. Um but you would ask Lars, you know, what uh what uh what what purposes are they interested in the property? Um one of the critical things that uh the district brought up was parking. Uh that they uh they that that neighborhood is pretty tight with parking, and this would open up some parking uh for uh their uh their community. And we entered into a formal agreement with the school to uh make available uh the vast majority of our parking lot uh to the school, uh to the students uh for free. Um part in which the district charges students uh to use that parking lot. And so we have that agreement already in place. They're also wanting to uh expand some educational uh use. Uh I think it's for their CTP program, which is for um 18 to 21 year olds who uh need some additional assistance um transitioning into adulthood. And we have um we've opened up to them and said, hey, we'd love to talk about what collaboration could look like, uh shared space could look like.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And the district isn't willing to let it go of that. They want the title to the property anyway?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Uh it that's what it appears that they want. They want ownership uh of the property, uh, is what it appears so. We haven't um my my our big posture, our big uh big request is that we would stay at the table to continue to talk and see how this relationship could grow so that we can both serve uh the families uh that were surrounded, that were, that were meant to serve. Um and so uh yeah, unfortunately, yeah, they are they are right now wanting to negotiate not for collaboration, but for uh ownership of the property and okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

So, in other words, you offered, let's stay at the table, let's negotiate this out. And the district said, no, forget that. We're just gonna take your property. I mean, I I feel like characterizing it that way. Is that a proper characterization?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

I can see how some people could come to that conclusion. Yes, we're not there now. They haven't filed officially for imminent domain, but the school board has approved the district to use imminent domain if negotiations fail. And what it appears to be so far is that negotiations are more monetary than it is collaborative.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Now hold on. By that you mean what? What does it mean that it's monetary instead of collaborative?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

That they that that so far it appears that their posture is they would like the property, they'd like ownership, they'd like title to the property, uh, is what it appears so far. Again, we're not there yet, um, and we haven't crossed that bridge yet.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Aaron Powell I mean, maybe I I hate to characterize it this way, but this is like Asquigo after all, one of the most affluent communities in the Pacific Northwest. So they've got so much money that even when you say to them, we'll let you use the parking lot free of charge, we'll let you use some of the facility for these things involving uh students with developmental disabilities up to age 21. We'll work with you on all of that, and you won't have to buy it. And like Oswego's school board says, no, no, we're gonna spend the money. We want to buy the property, even if we've got you know the uses out of it that we've already said these are the reasons we want we want to have the property. You're giving them that, and they're saying, nope, that's not good enough. We want to own it.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, they're they're their um their uh stated goals are are very public and very available. Um during the school board meeting, they had mentioned part of it was they had plans to do some of this stuff already on owned property, either through renovations or expansions. But when this became available on the uh public market, and then of course when they when the seller chose us, they chose to pivot uh towards uh imminent domain to keep us talking um and and really to keep the to keep an option available for them to take ownership of the property. Yeah. That's correct.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

So they already have property they could do this same activity on for the 18 to 21 year olds for the parking and everything else. They have the facility to do it, but they want your property too? That seems awfully greedy to me.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

You know, you know, I don't know those details. I'm not, you know, a real estate agent, I'm not a broker, I'm not a representative for the district. I don't know what they have available. I can only say what uh they had mentioned during the the public school board meeting that there were plans, uh, but the but when this property became available, the plans changed. Um and then once we closed on the deal, uh the plans evolved.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

And why didn't they make a better offer than yours?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

You know, I I I don't know. I I don't know exactly uh why the seller chose us. What I do know is that we were we were moving pretty quick. Uh we were moving pretty um efficiently, uh, and we really felt like God was leading us to this property. And so when this property became available, we jumped on it. We brought a strong offer in, we got a quick close. Um I I don't I do want to say they they did uh this is available publicly, but they did offer 4% more uh in price for the property, but I think the seller, there were some other levers that the uh sellers just chose to to go with us.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, well, there's nothing wrong with that because the seller can sell to who they want to. That's Jonathan Simons, who is a pastor at South Lake Church in Lake Oswego, and the Lake Oswego school board wants to take their property and they threaten to use eminent domain to do it. You got the Lars Larson show.