A Howard County hearing examiner cited several technicalities when she denied a couple's request to hold small church services at their Columbia home at a hearing on Monday, June 20.
Sabino and Anna Amaya had been holding church services for between 15 and 25 people at their Kings Contrivance single-family home for six years, but relatives of a neighbor complained a year ago, prompting the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning to require the couple to obtain conditional use approval for their house in order to hold the services. The couple said they stopped the services after the county contacted them.
The complaint arose when Brenda and Geneva Williams stayed with their mother for a month after a family death. The sisters said the church was too loud and that its odd operating hours were disruptive.
"When they were holding church service, it was sporadic, there was no consistency," Brenda Williams said at the hearing.
She added that "individuals would depart at one and two in the morning, and we found that strange. It was just sort of unreasonable as far as the quiet hours that are associated with a residence."
Williams said that there was "a sign up there identifying that it was a church, but we were always in question as to what kind of church."
Anna Amaya said in an interview through a Spanish-language translator that the Christian church services — small enough to be a bible study, she said — met approximately four times a week for about two hours each time. Additionally, there were cookouts and get-togethers with members, she said.
"We didn't think we would need permission to pray and sing and to read the bible," she said. "What we do the most is to pray for marriages to be restored and for families to come together... we teach the children obedience."
Sabino Amaya, through speaking through a Spanish translator, said that he wished the sisters had approached him directly about their complaints, rather than contacting the county.
To obtain the conditional use approval, the Amayas needed to create a parking area a certain distance away from their home, build a regulated driveway and have a designated amount of handicapped parking spaces.
Though the Amayas presented a drawing of a new parking area, Hearing Examiner Michele L. LeFaivre said the rendering did not comply with all the county requirements. Additionally, LeFaivre told the Amayas that they needed to build a commercial entrance into their home to comply with the conditional use guidelines.
She said that while the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal measure, requires her to be "very generous" concerning land-use matters, she was denying the couple's petition for conditional use because their home did not meet county regulations.
"I have to deny it... there's really nothing I can do," she said.
The Amayas can appeal the decision to the county's Board of Appeals, LeFaivre said.
But after the hearing, Sabino Amaya said the church probably will rent space for its services.