Statement on Ongoing Legal Battle with Moscow City Hall

On September 3, 2024, the Moscow City Council will hear an appeal from the City’s Zoning Administrator Cody Riddle who is arguing that NSA should not be allowed to put business offices in the upstairs of the new Pierian gallery space. This appeal is going before the city council because the city’s Board of Adjustment has already ruled in our favor. However, the city staff is continuing to try to block our right to use this space and has appealed the Board of Adjustment’s decision to the city council.

In addition to the Board of Adjustment already ruling in our favor, the zoning administrator himself decided in 2022 that these offices were permitted use in the Central Business Zoning District (basically downtown Moscow). But he is now saying that they are not permitted to be used. We still haven’t been told what changed to make them no longer permissible.

Zoning code is tricky, and so it does take a lot of work to get caught up on the situation. I’ll include a link at the end of this if you want to dive in a bit more. But the big picture issue is simply this: Zoning code is supposed to restrict what kind of land use is being performed on a particular property, not who is performing that use. Therefore, zoning dictates what kinds of functions can be operated, not who is performing those functions.

In the summer of 2019, Moscow City Council passed an ordinance (local law) that prohibits the expansion of educational use by colleges and universities, high schools, and elementary schools in the Central Business Zone, a use that city law once allowed. As of 2019, New Saint Andrews can’t put new college classrooms up and down Main Street—we need to keep them limited to our already existing permitted spaces (which are grandfathered in). But what we can do, and have been able to do up until now, is perform permitted, non-educational activities in the Central Business Zone. We worked carefully with the city staff to make sure that our business offices that were on Main Street complied with the city’s zoning restrictions. Those offices performed non-educational business activities like doing payroll or putting together marketing campaigns or fundraising initiatives for the college. No college classes were held in these offices, and we regularly checked in with the city to make sure all that we were doing complied with the city’s restrictions.

But suddenly the Zoning Administrator flipped his position and has argued that these offices are not permitted. He now argues that since these activities are supporting the college, they are the same thing as a college class. These offices are now, in the Zoning Administrator’s opinion, an educational use equivalent to a college classroom.

We argue that this is not only a sudden departure from the city’s previous position, without a clear explanation, but it also introduces a new standard in zoning regulations that will become impossible to consistently enforce. If an accounting office is doing payroll, what zone it can function in will depend on who its client is. Is the company doing payroll for Walmart? It needs to be zoned for grocery stores. Is it doing payroll for Schweitzer Engineering? It needs to be zoned for industrial manufacturing. Is it doing payroll for Gritman Hospital? It needs to be zoned for hospitals.

As I understand it, zoning laws exist to mitigate the impact that uses performed on one piece of property might have on those surrounding properties. But when I imagine an accountant doing the work of payroll, I really struggle to see how his impact on the surrounding properties would vary depending on who his client is. When he does payroll for a pig farm, does his office emit a nefarious odor? When he does payroll for an industrial manufacturing company, does his work suddenly start to emit ear-piercing decibels of noise?

This is a new standard in zoning administration that, aside from being ridiculous, will be impossible to consistently administer. This means that this will be a standard that is applied to New Saint Andrews College, but will not be consistently applied to other businesses. And this means that this new standard will be applied in a discriminatory fashion. There are presently a multitude of examples of the city not enforcing this new standard on anyone else. NSA stands alone in receiving this new standard of zoning enforcement. And it is this obvious discriminatory element that has us, as a college, determined to fight it all the way.  

At NSA, we do not reject the right of the city to establish sensible zoning laws. Personally, I am grateful when the city fairly administrates zoning ordinances such that my neighbors can’t put a pig farm next door. And even when the city passed the 2019 ordinance restricting the expansion of educational uses in the Central Business Zone, we did not fall on the ground like a Brazilian soccer player claiming discrimination. However, with this new approach taken by the city’s Zoning Administrator, we see an obviously discriminatory trajectory to the city’s actions. If the 2019 zoning ordinance is actually a pretense for discrimination and if zoning enforcement is administered capriciously rather than fairly, then we have a serious problem in our city that is deeply concerning.

So would you please join me in praying for the Moscow City Council’s meeting on September 3? It might very well be that this discriminatory behavior is limited to the Zoning Administrator’s office. The Board of Adjustment already sided with us once. It may be that Moscow City Council will see this for what it is and will rule in our favor. Would you pray towards that end along with us?

At NSA, we are eager to get this issue settled with the city council so that we can return our full focus to the work of providing a first-class education to our students. Also, I’ll just briefly add that if you are in Moscow or thinking of visiting in the near future, you should pop by and visit our freshly opened art gallery on Main Street—The Pierian. It is free to the public, and it’s our contribution towards making Moscow the heart of the arts.

The link that I promised above is here: 

Moscow Report: Property Pozes Puzzle for Planning Politics

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Dr. Benjamin Merkle

President, New Saint Andrews College