The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants $55,000 in rent money. Redwood City’s Temple Beth Jacob doesn’t believe it should pay one cent. And, that, in a nutshell, is the problem.
In July of last year, the Conservative congregation received word the PUC had decided to charge rent for land it owns and the temple is currently using as a roughly 100-spot parking lot. The PUC determined the fair rent for the 41,000-square-foot parcel of land as $110,586 but decided to ask the temple for half that amount yearly — $55,293 — because of Beth Jacob’s nonprofit status.
At that time, the PUC sought similar rents from a number of South Bay nonprofits and houses of worship that had been paying token rent, if any, for PUC-owned land above subterranean pipelines.
The temple, meanwhile, claimed it owned surface rights to the land, thanks to an easement from when it bought the property 50 years ago. Besides, Beth Jacob contended, the “market value” of the land the PUC came up with was artificially high to a ludicrous degree.
That’s the story both sides told 16 months ago, and both are sticking to it. And, not surprisingly, both claim the legal high ground.
Reuben Donig, Temple Beth Jacob’s president and legal counsel, claimed that, thanks to an easement right in the congregation’s 1951 deed, it has the right to use the land in question for “road purposes” or even to grow crops there if it so chooses. Donig believes parking falls within “road purposes.” The PUC does not.
Donig adds that a permit the temple signed with the PUC in the mid-1970s affirmed Beth Jacob’s right to surface usage of the land, and the burden to maintain and insure it. While the PUC claims the rights are revocable because of the permit, Donig disagrees.
“You can revoke the permit, but you can’t revoke the terms of the deed from 1951,” he said. “They contend the permit is the controlling document, which they had a right to revoke, not the deed. Which is complete nonsense, by the way.”
In addition, the PUC’s method of gauging market value — the price of similarly sized local lots — is unrealistic, according to Donig.
“Whether or not we have the right to park, we certainly do have a lot of rights on that land. There’s no denying that, it’s in the deed. And because we have those rights, the land itself is not marketable,” he said.
“It cannot be sold for much money to anyone. Anyone who wants to buy the land cannot build on it or do anything on it because that would be inconsistent with Temple Beth Jacob’s rights on the land. Anyone who tries to build anything on there or do anything inconsistent with our rights faces a court battle which they’ll lose.”
Gary Dowd, head of the PUC’s bureau of community land management, sees things differently.
“Basically, our position is still what it was, based on existing policies in place which the PUC passed,” he said. “We’ve not really aggressively pursued it, and encouraged [Temple Beth Jacob] along with all the nonprofits to come up with some other alternatives which we’ve yet to really see.”
While stressing that the “PUC is not in a position where we want to start a renewed battle,” Dowd claims the temple’s easement does not allow it to utilize the land as a parking lot and defends the PUC’s assessment of the disputed land’s value as a fair one.
“Certainly the church groups and houses of worship are not happy. We understand they have very tight budgets. We’re not out to hit the little guy and that’s why we have a 50 percent discount for use of the right-of-way,” he said. “Certainly it’s a sensitive issue, and that’s why we’ve not aggressively pursued it over the past year.”
Hoping to strike some sort of compromise, Rose Jacobs Gibson, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors District 4 representative, has been negotiating with the PUC on behalf of residents and nonprofits. Eschewing legal arguments (“If we go to the legal system, we can fight about this for 10 years”), Gibson is hoping to appeal to the PUC’s sense of community.
“Bad publicity is something I don’t think [the PUC] wants to have. We’re not going to approach them on a legal basis at all,” she said. The nonprofits and houses of worship perform “too much community service and too much community benefit for the PUC to not be reasonable and look for a way to actually work with and support them.”
Jacobs hopes the PUC may agree to a resolution calling for no or nominal rents for the nonprofits and houses of worship by “January at the earliest.”
Donig, however, would be very hesitant to sign any agreement that implies the PUC has the right to charge rent for Temple Beth Jacob’s parking lot.
“I think our legal ground is fundamental and solid, and I, personally, am very opposed to any kind of settlement or resolution which could in any way be construed as an acknowledgement on our part that we rely on their good graces,” he said. “If we do so, sometime down the road, maybe 10 or 15 years from now, some future director of the S.F. PUC will again look for more money and renew an assessment like this.”