Rabbi Lavey Derby is like everyone else. He just wants to live his life and not worry about whether the neighbors are going to slip a lawsuit under the door.
Again.
He ought to be pleased — on Wednesday, Feb. 21 Tiburon’s Town Council approved a scaled-back plan that allows Derby’s Congregation Kol Shofar to build an 8,300-square-foot multipurpose room and 3,662 square feet of new classroom space.
What’s more, stipulations limiting the number of people who could gather at Kol Shofar at any one time have been eliminated.
But Derby and his congregation still aren’t smiling. For the rabbi it was, in actuality, a Pyrrhic victory.
“This has been a long, drawn out, difficult, painful process for everybody. And it has stretched us in all kinds of ways. We’ve had to fight for the right to have Jews come to our synagogue — and for the right not to have to count Jews, which is onerous and smacks of another world and place no one wants to think of,” he said.
“We are relieved, but we are not overjoyed.”
That’s because the rabbi is waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Tiburon Neighborhood Coalition, which has opposed the synagogue’s expansion plans for nearly three years, has until late March to file a lawsuit against the city in an effort to halt the proceedings.
“There’s a definite possibility” of litigation, said David Holden, the president of the coalition. “We feel like we didn’t get our requests, and we feel like the town didn’t support the neighborhood the way we would have liked.”
Holden said the coalition would meet and make its decision in the next few weeks.
If a lawsuit is filed, it would be the second time Kol Shofar’s neighbors sued the synagogue. In 1997 the Conservative shul withdrew plans to pave over a grassy field on its property and create a parking lot after the neighbors litigated under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Future lawsuits also are likely to come under CEQA directives. But Derby points out that Kol Shofar conducted two Environmental Impact Reports in recent years, and is unwilling to withdraw its plans as it did in the past.
Memories of that lawsuit have only added to Derby’s frustration. He feels it’s a prime example of how strained relations with neighbors have been.
“We’ve been on this property for 24 years. And since the moment we got here, there have never been good relations between the neighbors and Kol Shofar. They’ve never trusted us to care about the neighborhood, and never seen us as people who want to be partners with them,” he said.
“They don’t want anything in this neighborhood that is not residential,” he continued. “They don’t want anything that could bring traffic and noise into their homes. This is their bucolic little village, and they don’t want anything intruding on it.”
In addition to suing under CEQA, Tom Gram, Tiburon’s mayor, said neighbors could also challenge the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act. The act, passed in 2000 under President Clinton, prevents zoning laws from discriminating against houses of worship unless there is “a compelling government interest” to do so.
Kol Shofar earlier this year enlisted the aid of the Becket Fund, a Boston-based nonprofit that specializes in
religious land use cases.
“I hope it’s over in terms of the use permit going forward. I hope no one sues,” Gram said. “I think we did the best job we could under the circumstances with the delicate balancing act required. Probably neither side is really happy, but that’s the way compromises like this go.”
The sizes of the structures the council approved are 15 percent smaller than Kol Shofar initially hoped to build. Although the synagogue doesn’t have to worry about attendance restrictions, it still has to curtail events by 10 p.m. on Saturday and 8 p.m. on Sunday, and must establish a shuttle bus system to alleviate parking and traffic congestion for large gatherings.
With a building permit in hand, Kol Shofar can move to the next step: Caucusing with Tiburon’s design-review board, a process Derby believes will take at least six to eight months. Even if neighbors do file a lawsuit during this time, it would not disrupt the design-review process.
In a best-case scenario, Kol Shofar officials estimate shovels will hit the ground in a year.
In the meantime, Derby said he hopes to repair the synagogue’s relationship with its neighbors. Given their joint history, he’d like to build one from scratch.
“We don’t want to impose on them. We don’t want to disturb them,” he said. “What we want to do is have our synagogue. They don’t think synagogues and churches should be in residential neighborhoods. But where else should they go?
“We share this neighborhood,” he continued. “We are here to stay and they are here to stay. It’s going to be a huge challenge, but I figure we have the next 25 to 50 years to work on it.”