Opinion: Drum Roll Please

It was hard to tell if you were on the winning or losing side of the recent Johns Creek Council vote on Mt. Pisgah Church’s sports field expansion.

The filled-to-capacity council spectator crowd – the standard for recent Mt. Pisgah hearings – waited patiently for their case to be called. Parents and children have endured many nights of long standing-room-only meetings.

At issue was whether or not Mt. Pisgah would be allowed to expand its private school sports complex on Brumbelow Road to include lighted baseball/softball, and a soccer field on a reclaimed land fill.

But what seems like a no-brainer on the surface can be everything but. The entire rezoning matter played out in a series of meetings that began at the community level and progressed through the city planning process, including an extensive Planning Commission hearing and, most recently, the full city council.

And in a competitor’s newspaper the story became a “blame the councilman’s wife” (when all else fails) scheme, based on assertions from a loud vocal neighborhood minority.

Most locals know Mt. Pisgah as the sprawling mega-church at the intersection of Old Alabama and Nesbit Ferry in the Newtown community of Johns Creek. The church underwrites a private school of approximately 230 students, with the goal of reaching 700 middle and high school students in the next few years. The 1A sports-designated school wants to compete with similarly ranked private schools and they want to be included in the same standards as area public schools. Johns Creek is known for its premier schools – public and private.

Parking and lighting, standard fare arguments in sports complex rezoning measures, were the only two significant issues raised by the Planning Commission, and this week, by city council.

While the discussions in both arenas took far longer than necessary, both bodies ultimately agreed on some restrictions for game parking and nighttime lighting that protects the community and adjacent property owners, while providing decent access by the petitioner.

Ultimately, the City Council voted to approve some outdoor lighting (the new soccer field) while curtailing the baseball and softball field lighting. The football stadium lighting was previously approved by the Fulton County Commission.

The council also voted to approve an asphalt parking area and reducing, from planning commission recommendations, the pervious (read: grassy) overflow parking spaces.

But the real story of Mt. Pisgah’s rezoning fight lies beneath the surface.

The lights, the noise, the nearby berm, with its “mandatory” Leland Cypress trees for landscaping, became the subterfuge. The real issue dates back only a year when Johns Creek was determining its boundaries.

Some residents in Newtown wanted to be annexed into nearby Roswell, while others agreed to join Johns Creek. The not-so-happy annexed crowd took center stage in the Mt. Pisgah debate, "taking on city hall."

Enter Lynn Pennington, director of the Newtown Park Community Foundation, Inc. and Dale Nesbitt, CEO of the Newtown Community Coaltiion, Inc. Both women run non-profit organizations, limited by federal tax law to the amount (and declared) lobbying efforts there are able to perform. And both women were vehemently opposed to the annexation of the Newtown Community to Johns Creek.

On the surface, both women professed (and we must believe) to be advocates for the community's best interest.

But good intentions or not, in documents obtained by The Post, both women are caught on record expressing their disdain for the initial annexation of Newtown into Johns Creek and their underlying reason for fighting the Mt. Pisgah rezoning efforts.

One of the women is quoted in an e-mail to areas residents saying, “If Area B [Newtown] had voted to come into Roswell it [the Mt. Pisgah stadium] wouldn’t have been an issue.”

In less cloak and dagger means, Lynn Pennington scheduled and held meetings with all Johns Creek City Councilmen to specifically ask they cast their vote in a specific manner – actions specifically prohibited by federal law for any non-profit without filing a section 501(h) document filed with the federal government. So while not cloak and dagger, maybe not so smart.

Those meetings are now public record, as are the door-to-door “vote no” petition activities conducted by Pennington.

Prior to 1976, there was enormous ambiguity over the amount of lobbying non-profits could do. The IRS rules said non-profits could lose their tax-exempt status if they did more than “insubstantial lobbying.” Since then, those lax rules have been tightened and not-for-profit organizations, such as Newtown Park, have specific guidelines they must follow in order to influence specific legislation.

In an email sent to the Mayor and Council, Pennington said, "speaking on behalf of the Newtown Park Community Foundation, we are focusing on two issues. We do not support Mt. Pisgah’s request for light on the new fields and we believe that 314 parking spots is sufficient for the proposed usage of the site.”

Oops.

Newtown Park, in its zeal to fight against outdoor lighting and save the community from the evil Mt. Pisgah Church, has likely stepped across the IRS federal tax line.

And when the potentially illegal door-to-door campaign provided only 100 signatures out of 10,000 area residents, the Newtown Naysayers resorted to throwing stones at City Councilman Randall Johnson’s wife for having an opinion on the matter.

The Newtown couple are members of Mt. Pisgah. The “No on Pisgah” crew asked for Johnson to recuse himself from the city vote because his wife had expressed support of Mt. Pisgah’s sports complex.

So let me understand this. The spouse of an elected official loses his or her right to free speech once their counterpart is elected. Hmm. Bad trade.

But isn’t it interesting how we all become experts on the law when it suits our purpose?

Fortunately, this story has a moderately happy ending. City Council members, while divided on the lights and parking, agreed that private schools be held to no higher standard than area public schools which enjoy similar sports lighting.

For its part, Mt. Pisgah needs to be straight with its community about ALL of its growth/expansion plans so that good community decisions can be made.

No one doubts schools need athletic fields – and building them on reclaimed dumps sounds pretty darn good. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Mt. Pisgah is becoming its own kingdom on Old Alabama (just drive by) and might need some zoning restraints – or at least a direct expansion planning conversation with the community.

Finally, this.

For everyone in the world who has issues with sports field lighting – know this: We're not zoning a nuclear waste dump.

My family home abuts a high school soccer field with a corner edge of the football stadium. There is “old school” lighting, not the cool new enviro-friendly kind. In fact, my parents bought the house because of its proximity to the school, stadium lighting and all.

Thirty years after my own high school graduation, it’s still a thrill to visit my mom’s home and hear the drum line cadence on a Friday night. It's actually comforting.

The lights have never bothered us (they are dim by bedtime, one night a week during the Fall) and there are far worse things in life than hearing a cheering crowd and the laughter of people enjoying a football game. May G-d help us to not lose sight of that.