Temple’s parking imbroglio with PUC comes to an end

"We've cooperated with the nonprofits."

Beth Jacob officials had never been informed of the decision before this week.

The issue erupted in 1999, when the PUC, searching for alternative sources of funding, opted to charge a number of nonprofits and houses of worship considerable rents on land above PUC pipes. Most of the organizations had been operating rent-free or paying nominal rents as low as $1 a year.

In Beth Jacob's case, the PUC assessed a chunk of the temple's parking lot as worth $110,000 a year, a fee it sliced in half as a gesture of good will.

The houses of worship immediately put up a fight, claiming the assessments of the land values were outrageous. While the plots were compared to prime plots of real estate in downtown Redwood City, most were surrounded by developed areas and, because of the pipes beneath, could not be built upon.

In Beth Jacob's case, Reuben Donig, a temple past president and its legal counsel, claimed that, thanks to an easement right in the congregation's 1951 deed, Beth Jacob has the right to use the land in question for "road purposes" or even to grow crops there if it so chooses.

Facing a public relations crisis in which it was portrayed as shaking down churches, synagogues and other nonprofits, the PUC capitulated last April. In a letter to San Mateo County Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson, PUC general manager Patricia E. Martel agreed to "grandfather" the nonprofits into their prior rental agreements.

While Donig noted that the term "grandfathered" usually implies a perpetual agreement, Dowd said that "anything is possible in the future."

Donig, who was never notified of the PUC's decision until hearing it from the Bulletin, was reserved in his reaction, expressing suspicion that the issue would be "re-opened when everyone with a short memory is not around."

"I suppose it's a good thing for everybody," he concluded.

"They have not taken an aggressive approach on this for a year and a half, and it was thoroughly obvious, to me at least, that they were not interested in pursuing it."

-- Joe Eskenazi