 Hi, tonight, I'm Sandy Bear, and I am tonight In interviewing Mr. John Franco, who's an attorney who represented the Catholic Church in its recent case on whether or not they could demolish the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which is our downtown cathedral And he was the attorney who at least at this level is here tonight to analyze why he won the position of the Catholic Church At least at the trial level, right? And now it is under appeal, correct? To the Vermont Supreme Court However, he's here tonight to explain Why this is an important case and what is the reasons that the court went the way it did He is the attorney who represented the Catholic Church here in Burlington and His client, I guess, was the Monsignor and all the It's actually the St. Joseph's Parish St. Joseph's Parish. They merged, the parish is merged, and St. Joseph's Parish now owns that property It used to be the... This is the St. Joseph's Parish, correct? This is the other cathedral. It used to be the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Parish And then I'll go through, that was part of the process, so they merged it. Okay. Under Cannon Law. Under Cannon Law. Cannon Law is great. I'll talk about it. Being a lawyer and learning about Cannon Law. That's what I found so interesting. Yeah, is that Cannon Law, as many people, many Americans don't Maybe know about, Cannon Law is the law of the Church, correct? Sure is. And if anybody wants to, you can just Google Cannon Law And you can get the full text of Cannon Law online. This is the way I read about it. And Cannon Law developed in the Middle Ages, I guess. No, even before that. Let me, you still like my thunderstrike. All right, go ahead then. This is John Franco. I have to tell we are contentious comments. That's me the first question. Yeah, okay. So I was going to ask your name, but I've already said that. So, how did you get involved in this case? Well, I got involved in this case because of my work in opposing the city place development by Don Cinex and that was like the hundred years before. We had an agreement very quickly and then he renamed on it and we were in court for five years. But it's recently settled. We settled that. But how did I get involved? I mean, the church, I will use the term broadly, the bishop, the diocese, the parish, the trust, which owns the Cathedral property. Apparently liked my moxie and what I did in representing my clients in that case. And they asked me to represent the church's interest in the question about the demolition of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. And I, having been, you know, I was raised a Catholic. I went to St. Monica's and Barrie. I was volunteered by my grandfather to mow the lawn of the Mother Cabrini Church in East Barrie for nothing. Thanks, Grandpa. Which I did, which was a selling point with a bishop. I used to mow the lawn of the church for nothing. So anyway, I'm representing the church on that. And maybe, maybe I could start out with what is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and why is it a matter, why is the demolition a matter of controversy? The building that is there now is the second Cathedral. The original Cathedral was built by Bishop Louis de Gosbrion at his instance. And it was started in, the cornerstone was laid of the original Cathedral. It was an original Gothic Cathedral was built, was started in 1862. It was consecrated in 1867. It wasn't quite finished because the towers were capped. The towers weren't finished until 1904. By the way, I am all, I'm pirating all this from Bob Blanchard's wonderful book, Lost Burlington. There's a chapter in there or a sub-chapter in there about this Cathedral. And I encourage everybody to read it. I am basically relaying what I read in his rendition. The original architect was by Patrick Hurley of New York City, who was a very world-renowned architect. The workmanship on that Cathedral was just wonderful. All this wonderfully stone brick and stone and marble architecture all handcrafted from, and according to this from local quarries, believe it or not. And it was finished so it could be used in 1867. It was consecrated on December 8th of 1867, which was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. And it was up until that time it was considered St. Mary's Church, but because it was consecrated on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, it became the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. That's how it got its name. One of the towers, as I said, were completed in 1904. One of the important points here is what's the difference between a cathedral and catholic liturgy in a church? The cathedral is the seat of the bishop. The seat of the bishop is the cathedral in Latin. And so Burlington, or actually the diocese of Vermont, had two cathedrals. They had the present cathedral St. Joseph's. They also had the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. They were both seats of the bishop. We had one bishop, he had two seats. And the reason for that was basically a division between the Irish and the French. And I think the French had the St. Joseph's Cathedral and the Irish. If I get this wrong, forgive me. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The original Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was just an architectural wonder. It was on the current lot, which is bounded by Pearl Street, St. Paul, which is now St. Paul Extension, where the bus terminal or places, Pine Street Extension and Cherry Street. It actually faced to the south onto Cherry Street. There's a wonderful picture of it, which was taken at the turn of the last century. Unfortunately in, well, it was the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception that happened to be located in the area of the Burlington Urban Renewal Area, which was adopted in the 1960s. And so you had major swaths of the old north end of Burlington that were torn down for redevelopment. And as a historical footnote, the last infill redevelopment of that urban renewal project occurred with the building of the Hotel Vermont. And, well, I think it was the early 2000s. So it was a good 40 years before all those properties that were torn down for this urban renewal plan were infilled and redeveloped. One of them was Don Senex's wonderful mall. He didn't know it at the time, but it was, as first was called, oh God, it was under, there was a developer from Montreal. It became Burlington Town Center. There were a whole number of iterations that that mall was built under. This cathedral happened to be in that, in that target area. And coincidentally, in 1971, there were two church fires, or maybe three. I may have forgotten one. The Episcopal Diocese Church was burned. And then a short time later, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was burned. The line was that it was a disgruntled altar boy at the cathedral who was having a bed LSD trip. But the word on the street from the Italians that live in Burlington is don't believe a word of it. They think that he was either paid to do it. Because at the same time, there are some redevelopers that came in. We're doing some redevelopment proposals. And their plane took off from Burlington on a snowy night in January and crashed in a Lake Champlain, and it's never been found. So there's all this circumstantial skull-duggery about the burning of these churches. I remember when these churches burned, because I was a freshman at UVM. And we used to climb up at the fire escape of the William Science Hall at the top of the hill at UVM and watch the fires in downtown Burlington. So that's a little bit of the history. So the original Gothic cathedral was burned in 1972. And for a variety of reasons, it was unsafe. Its walls couldn't be saved. It had to be completely demolished. The site was under insured. They didn't have the money to fully rebuild the church in its former Gothic splendor. Also, there just wasn't the craftsmanship around anymore to do that. So what we got was the current iteration of the church, which was a very minimalist Gothic, I don't know the exact... minimalist modern architecture by an architect called Edward Laramie Barnes, who was from New York City. It's not just any, it's a key. It was a key. It was a very, very renowned architect in the United States. And then the landscape architect was Don. I don't know if I can't read my handwriting. I think it's Kylie. Landscape architecture was very prominent in Vermont. Dan Kiley from Chalot. Very key also. Thank you for your opinion. No, that's fine. I'm hearing it in comparison to the Gothic structure. Oh well, it's just bottoms. No, no, no. He was a very renowned architect. If you read Bob Lancer's book, however, his work product was not... Bob Lancer calls the work product Unloved by the members of the parish. And in our case, a little bit fast-forwarding here, the bishop who made the decision to demolish this cathedral had studied... had actually focused on church architecture in his studies. And he was of the opinion that if the only reason to preserve this from an architectural point of view would be as an example of how not to build a cathedral. So from an aesthetic point of view, he was not persuaded that the building should be preserved. The other factor is that this new cathedral was not completed until 1977 and therefore under Burlington's zoning ordinance it's not considered a historic building because a historic building has to be at least 50 years old. So that was enough. Did that mean it was not on a list of... It may have been eligible for a list. I don't know if it was on a list. But the threshold question, and it had been decided... there had been decided 10 years earlier in another case to be a historic building under Burlington's ordinance that had to be at least 50 years old. And it was at the time that the demolition was being proposed. It was not a historic building. So let me get into the process the church went through to decide to demolish it. A demolition of a cathedral is called a de-consecration by demolition. It is a process that involves a de-consecration of a sacred space. And again in the hierarchy of sacred spaces and under canon law the Roman Catholic Church it's just under the Vatican. You've got St. Peter's, then you've got cathedrals and then you have churches. And so there was a very elaborate process that the bishop went through. I'm reading a couple of the things here. It was Bishop Coyne, it's now Archbishop Coyne. First of all he had to do what was called the Degree of Amalgamation which merged that cathedral parish with the current St. Joseph's Parish and involved a Presbyterial Council, a Diocese Financial Council and a College of Consultants. Then because of the value of the property that was involved it's actually the U.S. Conference of Bishops has this requirement but it had to be approved by the Vatican. They had to get approval from the Holy See. To demolish it? To demolish it. And that process took I think a couple of years. Finally the Holy See had granted approval on September 15th, 2021 under what was called the Latin is my hill obstet which means in Latin nothing stands in the way. Is that part of canon law too? Oh it absolutely is part of canon law. So that was the canon law procedure that the church went through. Another interesting note about this which came out so let me talk about the two proceedings that have been involved. There were two court proceedings. They both filed about at the same time by people who were either I call them Preservation Burlington, the people who generally affiliated with Preservation Burlington. One was three members of Preservation Burlington brought a suit in U.S. District Court claiming that the state statute that protected or limited municipal jurisdiction over churches and places of worship violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. About at the same time they also brought an appeal from the Decision of the Development Review Board which granted a permit to demolish the cathedral in January 2023. There was quite a bit of a delay between the Nehal Obstet in 2021 and the approval by the DRB in 2023 because of disagreements with the staff of the planning department about what was required they wouldn't grant a they wouldn't determine that the permit application was completed and it took about a year of haggling with the city attorney's office to get that straightened out and when that was straightened out the Paris was allowed to proceed with an application for the demolition that was brought in November or December of 2022 and it was approved by the Development Review Board in 2023. After that you then had the action brought by Preservation Burlington above federal and state court. Anyway, so that kind of sets the table of where we were in the litigation. The federal court case had a hearing about a year ago in March of 31st of 2023 in which the bishop and the diocese's canon attorney they have an ecclesiastic attorney that is the one that applies and interprets canon law for the church. That's Monsignor McDermott. An interesting fact about the demolition procedure under canon law is that canon law does have a proceeding where members of the parish if they wanted to could have appealed the bishop's decision to the Vatican. That actually has happened in Vermont. There was a decision to demolish the church and show them and the parishioners there brought an appeal to the Vatican. I don't know what the result of that was but that appeal process was available to the parishioners. There were no parishioners in the St. Joseph's parish which appealed the bishop's decision. Under canon law the bishop's decision was not challenged by any members of the parish. That sets the table for the appeal. Really the question that was raised by the state statute in which we raised is that the decision by the Catholic Church under canon law to do this deconsecration by demolition is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. So those are out there who might ask what the heck does the First Amendment have to do with demolishing a cathedral? The answer is everything because of first of a common law rule which was then adopted as a First Amendment doctrine by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1871 that said in a religion's determination to desanctify or demolish a church property is protected in what's called the church autonomy doctrine. The church autonomy doctrine says that under the First Amendment Establishment Clause that is a religious determination by that religious organization and secular authorities like a DRB or a city or a state or even the environmental division. The civil courts of the state of Vermont cannot interfere with that decision. That is a religious determination and it can't be interfered with under the Establishment Clause. We argue that the state's statute that limits jurisdiction of zoning, of local zoning over churches although not explicitly, implicitly recognizes that doctrine and ultimately judge Durkin agreed with that. He said, yeah, that's what it does and that therefore the environmental division didn't have any jurisdiction to interfere with the decision, the church's decision to demolish that cathedral. Now this doctrine about demolishing a cathedral has some really interesting history. Not the least of which involved the, and I want to get my notes here, the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Lower Manhattan. St. Nicholas Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox cathedral. It was destroyed by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and they've just recently completely reconstructed and apparently it's magnificent. I've been reading The New York Times about the reconstruction of that cathedral. However, the original St. Nicholas Cathedral was under quite a bit of litigation over who controlled the disposition of that property. It didn't have anything to do with 9-11. This was back in the 1950s. The concern at that time was the Russian Orthodox Church was still located in Moscow. And the concern in the United States was that they were tools of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Probably not a little bit of truth to that, you know. But, and there were two different lawsuits that were brought to contesting that one was in 1952 and one was in 1960. It was interesting about this. At the height of the Cold War I met a backdrop where the complaint was that if you allow the Russian Orthodox Church to decide matters regarding this church property, you were basically ceding the control of it to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The U.S. Supreme Court in both those cases said, sorry, this is protected by the church autonomy doctrine of the First Amendment. I think that's considering, you know, the McCarthy era. That's pretty significant. So, and the original case that decided this doctrine in 1871 was a case called Watson v. Jones. That was the dispute over whether, and I think that dispute had to have predated the Civil War, whether pro-slavery or anti-slavery factions of that church got to control the church property. And I don't know which faction ended up getting it. It's just that the court said in that case the civil authorities of the state of, where was it? I think it was Illinois or Indiana couldn't get involved in that. This doctrine, this church autonomy doctrine has had other applications since then. There's been decisions in 1969. There was a decision involving the serving in Orthodox diocese in 1976. There was some recent case law in 2012 and 2020 that extended the doctrine to say that it protected those churches from employment discrimination suits that were brought by some of their employees who may have been terminated or may have been reassigned. And it depends on what the job was, but if the job was significantly related to the teaching of church doctrine. I don't know if that's what it was, but they said that if it would involve their jobs, involve faith in doctrine and closely linked matters to internal government, the first of the church autonomy doctrine prevented the application of like, I think one was the Age of Discrimination and Employment Act and couldn't affect that. So that was the backdrop for Judge Durkin's decision. He did not or would not address the, what we thought was the easier question of whether or not the city had any jurisdiction over any building that's not 50 years old because it's not historical. So he didn't reach that. So now we are before the Vermont Supreme Court where these questions will be argued. It's under a briefing schedule now. The briefing should be done by roughly Memorial Day. And you got to do it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's cut and paste, you know. A little better than cut and paste. Oh, there's another thing I forgot to mention. There was an important decision in Minnesota. It was called Friends to Restore St. Mary's LLC versus the Church of St. Mary Melrose. It was a Minnesota decision in 2019. And it also said there was no, they were dealing with the application of a Minnesota Historic Preservation Statute. And it said there was no way that they could apply the criteria of that statute in determining whether or not the demolition of this church should be allowed. It said, could not be done without disturbing a ruling of the ecclesiastical body of a vertically integrated, organized religious organization with issues of doctrine and faith and mission of the church without fostering excessive governmental entanglement with religion. And so Minnesota said, because we're dealing with the decision to deconstruct a church by demolition, the church autonomy doctrine prohibited the government of Minnesota from interfering with that. Another interesting example of this was where there was a decision involving, I don't know what the dispute was, but it was a dispute involving, oh gosh, what was it? It was a decision made by the Mother Church, I forgot what the religious denomination it was. And the Illinois Supreme Court said, oh, Mother Church, you got it all wrong. You didn't apply your doctrines correctly. And the Supreme Court said, what do you think you're doing? It says the fallacy fatal to the judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court is it rests upon an impermissible rejection of the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical tribunals of this hierarchical church upon the issues in dispute and impermissibly substitutes its own inquiry into the church policy and resolutions of the matter and issues. In other words, you've got to stay away. Thou shall not interfere. And then again, because of its church doctrine, particularly under the Roman Catholic churches, because it's canon law, canon law is its own body of law. So it's something we have in law called an impermissible collateral attack of a decision that's made upon another legal body. For example, if you get a decision from a court in New York, you can't then contest that decision in Vermont. If that decision is final, you're stuck with it. It's kind of like the same idea. This decision, this de-consecration decision was made under canon law by the Roman Catholic Church. You cannot collateral attack that in a secular church in the state of Vermont or anywhere else for that matter. A secular body. In a secular body, it doesn't have to be, I'm not a church, it's a secular body. A secular court, administrative agency or what have you. So that is how the First Amendment has everything to do with the church's decision to demolish, to de-consecrate this cathedral by demolition. We'll see what the Vermont Supreme Court has to say about that. Yeah. I think that we have here the distinguished architect, right, Diane Gayer, who had problems with this decision. And I wonder, Diane, if you have some questions or if you have some thoughts about this. Or you did, I think, didn't you? Yeah, without going into the big question, why did the church decide to de-consecrate it through de-demolition? They could have de-consecrated it another way. They can de-consecrate without demolition, because they do that all the time. Yeah, but not with the cathedral. One of the big differences was the cathedral. This was the cathedral, number one, because it's the seat of the bishop. That was actually laid out in my senior... But there are cathedrals across the U.S. that are no longer acting cathedrals that have not been demolished. I'm not aware of those cases. I know the one case that wasn't a cathedral was brought in the First Circuit, but it was a church. You're asking me what the decision of this bishop was. There were three things, number one, it was a cathedral. And they did not want to have to police the use of the cathedral. It was put to what's called a profane use. They do not have to police whether or not this former cathedral building is being put to uses which they considered to be either unacceptable profane uses or sordid uses. Like what? Having events that they consider morally objectionable. The big thing they talk about is somebody performing abortions there. Somebody showing pornography there. They don't want... This is a cathedral. Cathedrals are a bit different than a regular church. It's different than St. Sylvester's church in Graniteville which has been de-consecrated and not by demolition. The view that this was a cathedral, number one, number two, was that Bishop Coyne made a determination that he did not think that the architecture of this was architecturally significant and worth preserving. The bishop made that determination. He had a very specific background in church architecture and he actually had done some teaching on this and did some TV programs on church architecture and didn't win but was nominated for several Emmys for the teaching that he did in that area. He talked about that very specifically. He took that into serious consideration. I've got my notes here. He had a doctorate degree in church liturgy with a concentration of church architecture and he also taught on the topic in St. John's Seminary. He just said in terms of the grade and in terms of what they wanted to do and what they needed to do with the property, they need that resources to help support St. Joseph's Cathedral. This one next door. You're talking about really potentially sacrificing two cathedrals when you can use the resources from that property to help maintain this one, which has really got a lot of deferred maintenance needs. So on a very, very, very small example, I own a former church in North Hero and I had and it was Catholic and it was formerly Catholic. Oh yeah, okay. It was formerly Catholic Church, right? And they wanted to sell it so that they could use the money to fix the roof on the Catholic Church in Grand Isle, right? Same story. They never fixed the roof. They took the money and ran. Well, I don't know. No, but what I'm saying is it's very easy to say, okay, we need to sell this property to fund that property and then it goes into the coffers. Yes, it does help some place but it doesn't go what's on the surface of whatever the needs are. I don't have any way to comment on that. Okay, let me... They made a decision. Yes, and the other thing is that I had... Well, I don't have to... I had two covenants against the property and one of them has been rescinded. Well, now I'm realizing that maybe I don't want to... Okay. So those are a little bit negotiable but when I talked to Michael Monte and the city of Burlington has bought other Catholic properties and covenants run with the properties and run with the land so there's no reason why they're afraid of what the building might be used for but it can be de-consecrated and it can be managed with covenants. They chose not to because it was a cathedral and they didn't want... Let me tell you a little object lesson. We ran into the same problem with our settlement with Don Senex in City Place in 2017 and we had a settlement agreement that was endorsed by the... by the Vermont Environmental Division and we had all these things and what they had to do for parking and so forth and so on and then they reneged on it and we spent five years trying to enforce that. We finally ended up settling with them and just being done with it because we found it impossible for people who are citizens in particular to try to police their compliance with the settlement agreement we just decided to tear it up and so my... particularly when you're dealing I can understand the church's position about policing something that has the visibility of a formal cathedral that's the difference in their mind the visibility of a formal cathedral well, a cathedral is the former seat of the bishop that's different than a church and one of the things that Bishop Coyne testified about in federal court was that what happens in Europe is these cathedrals end up getting taken over by the government or cologne by the government and the church so they can maintain them can't do that in the United States under the First Amendment that's a big difference that's a huge difference in terms of historic preservation I don't know what to deal with Notre Dame I mean, how many hundreds of millions of dollars after the fire of global money global money, yeah so let's say the church in this case the Catholic church capital C is at some point going to tear it down right? so let's say that's three years out if it happens it'll be about a year out that depends on how long it takes for the Supreme Court to make a decision if they say no if they say no it doesn't get torn down things don't get torn down that fast I mean the paperwork might go that fast it'll be about a year all that material has to go somewhere, all that material and land filling has to be accounted for they have to do an asbestos survey first, they have to do a lead survey first a lot of that's already been done has been done? I think should happen and that's that we're sitting there with the bus station here we're sitting with an empty building it's going to be torn down the church shouldn't care what happens to the building in the interim, it should become a food kitchen and a service kitchen and support exactly the mission of the Catholic church and supporting the people and the poor for the interim time zone whether it's a year or three years and they should put their money where their mouth is do you think that is what the mission of the church is? on the surface it certainly is what the religion's about why can't they do that why can't they offer something back to the public if they're going to tear it down they are offering something back to the public because they need money to support many of the services that this parish provides to the old north and in terms of people who are homeless people who are drug addicts this parish has a parish that has a lot of new Americans of limited means don't have the financial means to support the parish or the same level of support of the parish and other parishes and joy and that's part of their calculus so where are they doing it out of now? here out of here, they're doing it out of here and that's what they need that's what they want that's what they need and want the funds for which one, what are you talking about? St. Joseph's St. Joseph's is right here St. Joseph's is right across the street Cathedral this cathedral, this parish is one parish now so she's referencing the Catholic church that's on Flannamere with Pines Street those I think are different parishes what are they? I don't know the parish I don't know the parish organization is there a Catholic church? what's the name of it? St. Joseph's St. Joseph's Cathedral is on Allen Street this way behind you is Christ the King on Christ the King is on where? what's the one on Flannamere? St. Mark, St. Anthony's St. Anthony's I don't know what parish is there and they're different I'm not I'm not all conversant on the internal but could I ask you a question? I am so there are you part of historic preservation Vermont? No but your position was I don't know could you you didn't want to demolish, correct? No, I think the building is a dynamic building within the context of historic preservation for Burlington it's a critical building it's a Dan Kiley landscape which are phenomenally recognized around the world and there are some in New York City I mean I'm not a specialist it's not my field but I do know who Dan Kiley is and recognize his work and Edward Larrabee Barnes was an icon in the modernist tradition and he has done many many things and the competition for tonight is in fact a film on modernism at Contoy's auditorium that highlights his work and there's a quick flash you said of the building so it's not a forgotten building by any means it's not obsolete it's a very important building in the scheme of modern architecture and in the scheme of Burlington's architecture and we forget that Burlington's architecture is a cross section of 150 years it's not just little white clabbered buildings it's not just gothic cathedrals that's in fact very old school and we have some beautiful buildings that we don't recognize and so is it your opinion as an architect that it was a beautiful building? It is a beautiful building. Absolutely and are you also stating that that's the reason primarily that the building should be therefore preserved? I think the building should be preserved I think if the Catholic Church doesn't want it there are many uses that could be adapted from it I think the landscape with the trees, the grove of trees that's there should be preserved and we need the green space and we can use that capacity building for other things and that we're very short-sighted in how we perceive our architecture in Burlington and that we're willing to throw away such an iconic building we just keep stepping on our own feet Let me ask a question Mary has it and it is a difference between whether you sell the building and leave it on the landscape with the kudos and so forth that it's earned based on the building and the landscape versus tearing it down where you're producing trash and then you're selling a vacant piece of land why not sell the building and let it be reused, repurposed? Well okay so essentially that was the position of the opposition, is that correct? Basically that was the position that it should be kept because it's beautiful because it's a key example of a certain kind of unique architecture done by a well-known architect, correct? That was the opposition that was put forth to the Catholic Church and the court decided something else Well the DRB also decided and the DRB decided something else based on, I believe what you're saying John, based on the U.S. Constitution and Sandy told me that this doesn't hold up but I don't wait wait, I'm going to reference what it is okay that a church doesn't have to go through the same rules that let's say a developer has to go through in terms of let's say creating a master plan or a vision before you demolish something so in some communities you really if something happens to Memorial out of Torrin there'll be a lot of planning and public process before it gets torn down if if if if but in this case everybody's saying oh the church can do what it thinks is appropriate there's no master plan that's being enforced first there's nothing that says like other cities say you can't tear something down to create a parking lot you can't tear something down until you know what's going to happen and that's not the case right now That's not the rule in Vermont for anybody at the church well the city is now requiring people to actually plan for something so you can't do that and that's what part of the ruling is part of the ruling here is that in this exact presentation Burlington argued the court says look there's no redevelopment plan on the table when and if there's a redevelopment plan on the table that will certainly be subject to the city's zoning regulations that's not disputed but the simple act of tearing down the building is a proposal and they don't have to have and under Vermont law they don't have to have one it's not because it's a church it's not because it's a street for anybody they ruled that with Hannafords down in Hinesburg and I forget the other case that was cited by Judge Durkin but that's a generic requirement the other consideration here is putting aside the church autonomy doctrine saying you don't need to reach the church autonomy doctrine this building's not 50 years old the city of Burlington doesn't have jurisdiction over this and my question for the historic preservation people is you got caught napping with the 50 the 50 year old building rule and that decision was first made by the environmental division 10 years ago in a building owned by Alan Bjerke Alan Bjerke? right up by the same street that Manny lives on the 50 year old building rule in that case they said the building is more than 50 years old and you've got to comply with historic preservation but historic preservation folks have been on notice that under Burlington's ordinance keep in mind this isn't universal this is under Burlington's ordinance a building has to be 50 years old to be it's demolition to be regulated as a historic structure otherwise there's simply no zoning regulation to prohibit a demolition period no take for example the YMCA the YMCA building is a hybrid the nice part of the YMCA architecture is more than 50 years old but then you've got a kind of junky cruddy park that's all really covered with graffiti and it's the old swimming pool which was by the way built with CDBG money that Bernie Sanders got when he was first mayor like 81 or 82 that's not historic so in terms of how the ordinance worked the property owner could have at least in theory torn down the old non-50 year old part of the building would have had it gone through historic preservation review for the historic type but there's no proposal to demolish that so anyway that's just kind of the vague reason but you know I mean I think and look at the church made a decision about what to do they don't agree with your assessment of the property they don't agree with your assessment of the architecture significance of the property but even if they did well if they did then we wouldn't be here yeah I mean they could have chosen a different route they're choosing this route because of convenience because of perception that it will sell more on the real estate market with no building there and you know that could be a mistake too they won't know that if they tear it down you know there's so I don't know that it helps but I was looking at church versus municipal authority and came up with an example of this Amish it was in Pennsylvania and the municipality wanted to put this Amish property on a water system no a sewer line and they went through the authority of the Amish property who didn't want a sewer and the sewer would have to be pumped so that meant electricity and that was all against their doctrines versus the municipality who needed them to be on a sewer line and of course there was all of that well in the end but the court system in Pennsylvania the way I read it and I'm not a lawyer but that the public good of putting them on a sewer line trumped if you will that so it's too bad that we can't find an avenue here that would trump the demolition of that building but even under Vermont's statute they couldn't force that's not really a zoning decision for starters the statute we're dealing with here wouldn't even that statute would not apply to whether or not a church had to hook up to a sewer system so I suspect that even in Vermont that they would say look you just can't throw your turd in a bucket out the window you just can't do that I would argue that the public good also has to respect the other public good which is the constitution of the United States he or that this case was argued under constitutional separation of church and state and the establishment clause of the First Amendment that's also how the decision was reached and I would argue that yeah I know but the Amish might have had a bad lawyer what? well there's another case involving the First Amendment with Sandy's hometown of the church in Springfield and they lost they had terrible legal advice and their lawyers blew it but that church is still there and it's a derelict and the only thing that's being used for is a cell tower cell phone tower one of the other things that was interesting can I say something else? after you that we raised in this case what preservation Burlington is arguing is a real inconsistency in how the city of Burlington has historically dealt with demolition of buildings that are not going to be replaced at least not immediately with another structure and we came up with four examples where they granted demolition permits to the Episcopal Diocese most of it occurred at Rock Point where the buildings were demolished there was nothing being replaced they got the demolition permit no questions asked another one was granted to the city of Burlington parks department out at North Beach building was demolished they were just going to replace it with grass no questions asked there was no building to replace it then that was under 4413 because it was a municipal use and two private uses where that happened so we said you know hey wait a minute you know there's the argument that somehow in this case given the way the ordinance is written that we can apply a different standard to the Catholic church violates another federal statute called the federal religious land use institutionalized persons act the acronym is RELUPA I think I have it pronounced correctly that statute says you cannot treat religions or particularly religion religious denominations differently you have to treat them the same and we had an argument we said judge you cannot adopt the argument that's being made here given the precedent of how the Episcopal Diocese was treated how the city of Burlington treated its own parks department and how these private parties were treated they were all said you know no questions asked and in many of the cases in the Episcopal Diocese cases the buildings were more than 50 years old they were his in my view I looked at the pictures they looked like pieces of junk but they didn't have to go through the process it was like you know they were allowed to demolish check the box go ahead demolish that's what happened so in this case we actually care about the building collectively and we have no recourse we care about it there's something called equal protection of the law and there's not it's not like once it's an old George Carlin thing about what happened to all the Catholics who went to hell on the meat wrap and he said on the meat wrap this law is eternal except for this weekend well that can't be the rule you've got to have a rule that's equally applied to people who are similarly situated and that's another flaw so you have that flaw you've got the 50 year old rule flaw the first amendment autonomy doctrine and you know what the supreme court of Vermont could say I'm completely full of beings and you're a favor of preservation Burlington that can happen wait I missed what you were saying I said the supreme court of Vermont could say I am full of beings and completely rule in favor of preservation Burlington it's just the way the court system works in other words it's not over it's not over we're just only half done and the state preservation historic preservation at the state level hasn't shown their interest at all no I don't know that they have any jurisdiction over this it's a municipal it's a state entity no it's not historic preservation of the state of Vermont I don't know they visit historic properties all over the state let me give you a municipal ordinance 101 the difference between the Burlington case and the saint I was looking at historic properties for the University of Vermont when I worked there the state historic preservation officer came to visit the properties which government any one of the ones at UVM and I did some work for the land trust and the state historic officer came to look at the windows that we were choosing and that was within the city of Burlington I don't know what claim to jurisdiction they have but what I was going to explain to you is that there's also a dispute about the St. Stephen's Church in Winooski I think most people agree I don't think it's the consensus about the cathedral or the metric concession that that church is beautiful it was built in Rutland Marble now there's a huge difference in the ordinances that are involved the city Winooski's ordinance says that if the property is listed on the state historic preservation registry that shall not tear it down and so that was the ruling of the development review board in Winooski now that's on appeal right to the environmental division now that appeal has been put on hold and this is all as a matter of public record because it's on the on the what they call the public web resources of the state judiciary the public public plural that they're in negotiations with the church about how to preserve that in other words but that's a different parish St. Francis Xavier parish number one and number two it's a different ordinance a very different ordinance see that's how the state would have become involved the state didn't get involved and the state said yes that's on our list of historic our historic registry list and then therefore the city Winooski said our ordinance says if you're on that list you cannot tear it down as historic building that's a whole that's 180 degrees opposite of what we're dealing with here which was an ordinance that says it's not 50 years old we don't have any grounds to deny your demolition application that's literally the way it works there's no standard to deny it if it's not historic if it's historic you have to go through this whole process and I if it was historic aside from the fact that whether or not it was a church or not there's no way the city would have granted it are they going to grant it for St. Stevens what's going to happen because St. Stevens during negotiations it's in the record they say they're in mediation they've gone through two mediation they have another status conference actually I'm looking at that today on April 1st before Judge Durkin like your situation it depends what town you're in it depends they had a similar situation of Barrie involving the competent St. Monica's what will they be using the money having demolished if in fact that's happens what St. Stevens I did actually I did have a conversation about that with the attorney for St. Francis Parish and Winooski I think it's up I'm not certain that they would like it I think probably take it down I would guess because I think it's worth more that way but I don't know if they might that's a very beautiful well-loved church so I think that there might be they also have a lot more developable properties around it that can preserve the church and do a pretty good development of it without having to turn the cathedral down I mean look I don't know all I know is that they're under negotiations they go through two mediations and that means that they're trying to work something out they're not automatically going to demolish that building because of the historic importance and also because I think it is perceived that it is a well-loved church and what John said was that your bishop said that this immaculate conception was not well no Bob Blanchard's book was well-loved of course the whole neighborhood was destroyed so the parish parishioners were pretty much gone and redistributed these were old-time parishioners that just I have heard from this is just anecdotally but a lot of people that were parishioners and have a lot of involvement in the Catholic church and they just this church it doesn't have the same level of support let's put it this way that Saint Stephen's does not remotely because everybody's sort of gone no I don't think that's it it's not liked Saint Stephen's but I also wanted to ask John a question because I don't I think there's a big difference in this religious accommodation part of the constitution way different than in Europe where the state pretty much gets in Francis in France as a result of the French Revolution the state really does get to control the church in this country it can't happen you've ever been to a criminal court in Quebec where they had the crucifix behind the judge? that's a mouthful that they're not the same how about in the hospital in Manuski crucifixes with you a lot of time but they're not a state entity I remember I went to the Palace of Justice money just joined us okay but anyway I went to the Palace of Justice in Quebec City in the 1970s and I went in there and in the courtroom there was the big crucifix behind the bench and I went oh my god I did too I was in the court in Quebec same thing in other words in other countries wait wait this is critical let's see what we can add to it money? okay so sorry we have a technical problem but Diane was here and then you held your spot very well so you can chime in if you want I have some comments to make but I think since I didn't hear the beginning of your discussion they're not really appropriate yes it is appropriate please Manny Manny go ahead with all due respect to John Franco who has done many good things in our community including the Waterfront as a public treasure this is double talk we all know what this is about everybody knows it's about money let's understand who we're dealing with this is an organization that conducted murderous religious wars for centuries this is an organization that has aided and impeded the genocide of untold masses of indigenous people in the Americas this is an organization that through the inquisition terrorized and tortured thousands of innocent people especially women this is an organization that more recently at the end of World War II helped Nazi war criminals escape from Germany to South America through the Vatican this is an organization that looked the other way as its priests raped and sodomized young children and this is an organization that to this day denies equal opportunity to women in employment and in their rights to reproductive freedom, abortion contraception and family planning the Catholic Diocese has no interest in preserving this building as a community asset it has no interest in our community period so it would be better if we changed the discussion and took this opportunity to initiate a community conversation about rescinding the financial privileges and municipal benefits that the church has enjoyed all these years the Vatican is one of the richest landowners in the world it's time that here in Burlington they start bearing their share like the rest of us those are my general comments well we might all agree with much of that but it seems that the court decided something different and it was based on the US Constitution right? that's the way it goes but who could disagree who could disagree with Manny's history Manny's suggesting that the church didn't have to take this route but did I mean what he says is obvious the church didn't have to do this obviously however they did and the court approved it the US Constitution regardless the US Constitution is based very unusually on the idea of the separation of the church and state and against the establishment clause maybe that's unfortunate in this case but I believe that in the end isn't that the way the court decided it was on our Constitution we'll see what the remarks were but the trial court right? which I would say I think the US Constitution is very unusual and given the example of France which really doesn't recognize the separation of church and state most of these countries had state religious requirements the king of England is a theocrat thank you Henry the restauling all his ideas about how to treat people is really threatening their families where genocidal war against people that disagree with him but everything Manny says how could you deny it but how could you make it relevant to this decision is a different story but I mean this is why you have your vicky programs is to get other voices at the table and I think that I think that Manny sort of brought us back to reality with the state of the catholic church and so that collectively forces the rest of us whether this building is here or not to address some of that reality so I'll ask Manny and you how do we address that very real reality that Manny is talking about Manny let's hear from you oh I thought I was clear I think we need to initiate a community discussion with the participation of the legislature we have a young mayor who has experience with the legislature and we have to renegotiate our position with respect to the church and the benefits that it enjoys municipal benefits tax benefits come to a different understanding about why the church given this particular behavior in particular should benefit from taxes that we all pay I think it requires a conversation the fact that a court has rules I think that the if I may add to it I think that the demolition of the church at this point is irrelevant I think that it's very clear what the church wants to do they want the money they're going to do it so that's not really an issue and I don't think it's an issue of historic preservation I think it's an issue of community responsibility and the church has demonstrated by this action by this legal action if you want but they had an option the church has demonstrated that it has no community responsibility it feels no community responsibility to protect the assets of this community because the minute you build a building it's an asset of the community it's not just you are building it benefits from municipal services of all kinds from police and fire to roads to the development of the community to the building of the community by all the community members so I think that that's what the next discussion should be about not about historic preservation I think that it should be about seeing to it that the church pays its fair share I'm not here to comment I'm not here to talk about that okay Manny so I think what you're talking about is ending the tax exemption status of all churches or just the Catholic Church absolutely all right thank you very much for your comments that's what preservation really can argue to the federal court case they said that the benefit of tax exemption violated the establishment clause and there's a lot of U.S. Supreme Court case law that says well it might but it's okay it does it a little bit I mean that's sort of the rationale basically they're literally there's wiggle room there and there's acceptable wiggle room for giving these these institutions so let me ask Manny another question so Manny would you like us to have a Vicki program then on tax exempt status for religions all churches all universities all other organizations like the Y to and the hospital all those institutions which have tax exempt status I'm happy to do that yes I think that we need to have that discussion but we need to have it in the context of the quid pro quo that these various organizations provide it is clear that there are organizations that provide tremendous benefits for the entire community and I think that those benefits can be laid out against the cost that they would be required to pay if they pay fairly their real estate taxes the way everybody else does so I think that it's a fair discussion I think that the community organizations that truly serve our communities all that service should be taken into consideration it could be in lieu of taxes I think that that was has been the basis of the argument of the University of Vermont of other organizations but I think it needs to be revisited great okay so maybe we will consider with the other members of Vicki we'll consider examining the whole idea of property tax exempt status thank you Manny anybody else have any final thoughts questions you John Eric all I'll say is I've probably done more to deal with eliminating property tax exemptions than anybody in this room with UVM the hospital lots of luck I mean exhibit A the housing crisis in the city of Burlington the University of Vermont has had a culture since the World War II that it only houses its freshmen and sophomore students and that's it if you're a junior or senior or graduate student you get a house in the neighborhood St. Mike's doesn't do that Champlain doesn't do that when it was still around Trinity didn't do that we want to talk about dealing with the housing crisis in Burlington make UVM house all its students they won't do it they get the same mumbly peg blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and the other thing with the hospital I mean I went to war with the hospital in 1987 about the property tax exemption and we lost and the legislature won't go near it and you want to talk about an impact on the community in terms of policing and so forth and so on and what they pay and in lieu of tax payments it's peanuts compared to what they would actually have to pay if they were assessed the legislature has made those decisions we are powerless to do anything about it good luck in doing that and I don't think you're going to be able to assign tax exempt status on a you know one for the one for the congregation listen another one for the Episcopal it's another one for the Catholics based upon what their historic sins have been or what the relative contribution of the community is going to be that just isn't going to be a workable or manageable standard so even though there's no church, no service that's a Catholic church it's empty so it's obviously providing no service to anyone what Catholic church are you saying is empty but it's in the process of being deconcentrated that's the problem if we weren't if they weren't after they got the approval from the Vatican in 2021 if it hadn't been obstructed the cathedral would have been demolished and it would have been repurposed and it would have continued to use it as a place of worship until and unless it's sold we made that very clear in the court findings in in Montseer Ruthier made that very clear and Montseer McDermott made that very clear if it's not used as a place of worship anymore it doesn't enjoy any of these protections that we've been talking about except that it's not 50 years old to come back to Manny's point about having a conversation I think discussing not saying that it's going to change how UVM acts or the hospital but putting back on the table how non-profit status and tax deferred and all these different machinations is a community conversation and we can try to understand that in a better way so that there is a relationship and it's not just oh I'm this well they do that and they're in lieu of tax negotiations but look at it I don't have kids in the Burlington School District I don't have kids in the education system I still have to pay an arm and a leg in education taxes and they're going to go up like crazy so when you start saying well what's the relative contribution to your community and what's your tax thing that's not the way taxation works it's not, if it is I'd be only paying 30 cents on the dollar property taxes because I don't have kids in the school system I'd only be paying for police or fire and the rest of it so I don't know how you have those kinds of conversations about how you deal with these institutions I don't and I've been through that I've been through that for 30 years but not a lot of success I mean I would be the first to admit that the lieu of tax concessions we've got at UVM in the hospital are pitons compared to what they're actually owed given the fair market value of those institutions going back 30 years ago is that there was even though we're always contested but there was a better relationship between UVM and the city in that the city had a contract and a master plan that UVM had to abide by and had to go through mini act 250 with the city I went through that process I represented the city in those proceedings to try to do exactly that and we got nowhere I represented the city in to mini act 250 on every single project I sat in front of city council and Manny was head of city city doesn't have jurisdiction over UVM that's the problem at the time there was a better relationship to hold UVM feet to the fire than there is today because today as far as I can tell there's absolutely no relationship between the city and the university what I recall when I was president of the UVM this basic relationship with the city was to flip Bernie Sanders the bird and would not cooperate with us at all and when Peter Clavel was mayor he sent me and Gretchen Bailey up to represent the city to intervene in UVM's act 250 processes because they were doing some expanses at that time to try to get them to do to do some planning and do some things about housing with act 250 wouldn't go near it they wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole UVM was sacrosanct and they're not going to build housing oh they built a little bit but they wouldn't do it we held up St. Mike's in Champlain College as a standard there was no way that they would be required to meet that standard it's just a house half your students and so they're all in the rabbit warrens in wards one and two and three and that's speculation and they get run down and they pay an arm and a leg and they voted for Emma I mean if UVM was at all progressive they would have bought these priorities up and turned the minutes into housing in the neighborhoods that UVM could have on them at least kept the rents down okay any further thoughts so I guess what Manny and Diana and Mary are suggesting is that we have a community discussion about tactics of status correct is that what you okay is it hot on Manny's list because we could do it if Manny wants to do that we'll do it right Manny okay thank you so I guess that concludes us tonight right okay thank you John and thank you everybody come back for our next discussion no no I well as he said it's not over till it's over right the appeal was filed late February usual rule yeah exactly you're talking about 20 2025 for demolition if we win that's why I think we need this in our usage the soup kitchen so far you better find another place though thank you see ya