Deadline for Public Comment Submissions on Grace City Church's New School is Jan. 5

A hearing for GCC's 'Conditional Use Permit' application will take place Jan. 23, and folks plan to speak both for and against the proposed school

A City of Wenatchee notice announcing the Jan. 23 hearing, and requesting public comments, in the parking lot of King’s Orchard Church of Christ in Wenatchee. Photo by Dominick Bonny.

The City of Wenatchee will have a hearing to review Grace City Church’s Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application to use King’s Orchard Church of Christ on Orchard Avenue in Wenatchee as the site for their new Garden City Academy.

The public is encouraged to comment, and folks can do that by emailing Ruth Traxler at rtraxler@wenatcheewa.gov or by sending your written comment to the address on the notice. The deadline to submit comments is 5 p.m. on Jan. 5.

A photo of page one of the public notice. Photo by Dominick Bonny.

You can read the entire notice here.

There are Wenatchee residents both for and against the proposed school who plan on making their voices heard at that hearing.

Mom for Liberty Wendy Priest, who is listed in Grace City Church’s member database, encouraged fellow members of the Chelan-Douglas Moms for Liberty Facebook group to attend the meeting and speak in support of the school.

A screenshot of a post about the hearing someone shared in a neighborhood group about the hearing.

Priest was one of 19 individuals who submitted lengthy and odd identical public records requests to the Wenatchee School District in 2022. The requests were a mishmash of COVID-related conspiracy theories written by an out-of-state Libertarian activist and massaged into the form of something resembling a public records request. The goal of the stunt was clearly to create headaches at the Wenatchee School District and waste public employees’ time. It’s a tactic sometimes referred to as “paper terrorism.” You can read the piece I wrote about that here.

Other folks, including Abbey Reynolds, are concerned about an increase in traffic in their neighborhood, which sees a lot of traffic already.

“After reviewing the committee’s city codes and the planning documents there are many problematic things with putting another school on this neighborhood. There are 3 public schools, a college, a K-12 private school and a Pre-K/K school (Sage Hills Church) all within a mile of each other and 2 retirement facilities with approximately 50 apartments and 70 beds for memory care facility for seniors,” she wrote. “The increased traffic, potential weekend activities, noise pollution, previous misleading information provided to city planning committees in the past, etc. seems to indicate it is an unsafe disadvantage for the neighborhood.”

The “misleading information” she was referring to is the fact that GCC leaders stated that the building they refer to as “The Barn Arc” was going to be used for storage, according to the CUP application for that building. But GCC Executive Pastor Josh McPherson has said they want it to be a space that makes one of Wenatchee’s main shopping and events centers, Pybus Public Market, “look like a JV, you know, C-squad basketball team.”

Last month, Stage Kids WA staged multiple theater productions/winter fundraisers in the Barn Arc.

Susan Heminger is another Wenatchee resident who lives near the proposed school who has concerns. She said normally she would support the establishment of a new Christian school in the area, but not in this case.

“By moving into our neighborhood, GCC proposes to be my neighbor in a very real, tangible sense. As a fellow believer, I would ordinarily support the founding of another Christian school in Wenatchee. However, a healthy neighborhood dynamic requires cooperation and compromise. Again and again, I have personally witnessed that their congregants on both an individual and congregational level are not interested in practicing either. Sincerity in their cause doesn’t negate their obligation to operate by the same rules by which the rest of our community abides,” she wrote. “Sadly, this means that I can’t assume that they will act in good faith when it comes to agreements they make with our city. Complete honesty requires truthfulness in both the commission and the omission of what they include in their stated intentions and how they implement them. If pressed or inconvenienced, their own interests will supersede due process. This is not how a trustworthy, reliable neighbor behaves. This is why I believe that their proposed school location would have a negative impact on this residential area that already has two existing schools in very close proximity.”

Reynolds and Heminger both touch on something I also have questions about, and that is what GCC leaders have said on CUP applications and told city officials in the past.

So I submitted a public comment myself. Although mine is in the form of questions. So far GCC leaders have refused to answer any of my questions or respond to any of my calls, texts or emails. So I hope by putting my questions out there on the record in a public meeting it might prompt a response from GCC leaders.

Here is the email I wrote Ruth Traxler at the City of Wenatchee with my comment submission.

“Hello Mrs. Traxler, 

Here is my public comment for the CUP hearing regarding Grace City Church's Garden City Academy which is planned to go into King's Orchard Church. 

‘My comment is actually a few questions, and I hope GCC leaders will answer them honestly. According to a former member of your security team, "25 to 30 percent of the men" in your congregation are armed on any given Sunday. Will there be firearms on the premises of Garden City Academy? If so, who will be armed and what types of weapons will they be armed with? What type of training will armed individuals affiliated with Garden City Academy have? On the conditional use permit for the structure you call 'the Barn arc,' GCC leaders wrote that the building was to be used for storage. But now it's being used as an events center. How can the community trust that you will use King's Orchard Church solely for the purpose you put on this CUP application?’

Thank you and best regards, 

Dominick Bonny

Wenatchee resident, reporter”

According to the FAQ document on the Garden City Academy website, there will be armed security on campus.

What I would like to know if that means security will have firearms, if so what kind of firearms they will have, how those will be secured, and what kind of training these security team members will have. The School Resource Officers (SROs) in Wenatchee, East Wenatchee and Chelan schools are law enforcement officers with the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office, Wenatchee or East Wenatchee police departments.

There’s a state law that deals with this very issue. It’s RCW 9.41.280 – Possessing dangerous weapons on school facilities.

Part three, subsection B offers a pretty specific framework for who qualifies to carry firearms on private school campuses and sets that bar pretty high.

“…a person who is not a commissioned law enforcement officer and who provides school security services under the direction of a school administrator may not possess a device listed in subsection (1)(f) of this section unless he or she has successfully completed training in the use of such devices that is equivalent to the training received by commissioned law enforcement officers;” it reads.

You can see the entire law online here.

I plan on attending the meeting to see if my questions are answered, and what others have to say.

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In Other News: GCC Wallpapers Out Now

Four of the smartphone wallpapers released by Grace City Church recently.

Grace City Church also released an assortment of smartphone wallpapers online recently, and you can browse them all and download your favorites via their website here.

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