Churches Bankrupting Texas Town
From LA Times
Churches Putting Town Out of Business
Stafford, Texas, has 51 tax-exempt religious institutions and wants no more: 'Somebody's got to pay for police, fire and schools.'STAFFORD, Texas — They are not the words one expects to hear from a politician or a Southerner, and Leonard Scarcella is both: "Our city has an excessive number of churches."
Scarcella is mayor of this Houston-area community, which has 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles.
With some 300 undeveloped, potentially revenue-producing acres left in Stafford, officials are scrambling to find a legal way to keep more tax-exempt churches from building here.
"With federal laws, you can't just say, 'We're not going to have any more churches,' " Scarcella said. "We respect the Constitution, but 51 of anything is too much." [read it all]
Bill McCartney
