We want to be clear we will stop at nothing to open this center
—Steve Trombley, CEO Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area
Steve Trombley says Planned Parenthood will “stop at nothing” to open their Abortion Fortress of Aurora. So what else is new? We’ve already seen that Planned Parenthood won’t be held back by any notion of honesty or respect for the rule of law.
So far they haven’t done worse than that—bad as it is—and for now I’ll assume Trombley meant those words only to intimidate the City Council with the prospect of a long legal battle.
But just imagine if I were to say we’ll “stop at nothing” to keep them from opening. I’d be accused of threatening violence.
But wait—I have been accused of threatening violence. Trombley did just that in his letter to the City Council and full page ads in the Beacon, where he said the pro-life leaders in Aurora have “a long history of advocating violence.” Tomorrow we file suit for libel in Kane County.
It’s been a tough week for Steve Trombley, and it’s starting to show.
Yesterday as City Hall, I passed him on the sidewalk, offered my hand and said, “Steve! Nice to see you again!” We had met in Judge Charles Norgle’s federal courtroom last week—where Trombley lost his suit to force Aurora to let PP open.
He muttered in reply, “I don’t need to talk to you,” and yet he shook my hand—shook my hand even while snubbing me. It was strange: his hand was saying one thing while his mouth said another. Then again, this is the guy who boast of keeping his building secret while claiming to have been up front about it.
It must be hard to be Steve Trombley these days—especially after the bombshell (that’s a metaphorical bombshell, by the way) that we dropped on the City Council last night. Here it is:
Just yesterday we learned that the City zoning codes require “health related facilities . . . not operated for pecuniary profit” to obtain a special use permit—a process requiring public notice in a local paper, written notice to nearby residents, and a public hearing. Planned Parenthood did none of these things.
Planned Parenthood’s response, not surprisingly, is confusion and contradiction:
PP/CA CEO Steve Trombley: “I have no idea what he’s talking about.” (Quoted in the Aurora Beacon News; it’s not clear whether “he” is zoning administrator Ed Sieben or pro-life attorney Vince Tessitori.)
PP/CA Spokeswoman Sara Knaub: “Officials from Gemini discussed this with the city. It was determined that this project did not require a special-use permit.” (Quoted in the Aurora Beacon News.)
Now, why would the question of a for-profit LLC like Gemini Office Development needing a special use permit even come up? (And by the way, what’s a not-for-profit corporation like PP/CA doing owning a for-profit LLC anyway?) Doesn’t add
up.
Planned Parenthood’s obfuscation aside, here’s the deal with the special use permit:
Certain uses of property—a church, a soup kitchen, a not-for-profit clinic—require this special permit because of the impact they’re likely to have on the surrounding community. The threshold for acquiring such a permit is higher.
Planned Parenthood continues to repeat that the property is zoned for a medical facility. That’s true. But it’s not enough. Because PP is a not-for-profit agency, they need that special use permit. And they don’t have it.
What’s more, if 20% of residents on the property’s frontage object to that “special use” (for any reason), the special use permit can only be granted by a supermajority of the City Council. Ouch.
For more of the details on this, see Jill Stanek’s blog. Jill has been doing an outstanding job of covering the scene here in Aurora. Also of interest is JT Eschbach’s video of a PP supporter dissing Trombley.
Now, it may take some hard work—even yet another lawsuit—to get the City to follow through an actually enforce their laws on Planned Parenthood, whom they’ve allowed to occupy the building this past week without an occupancy permit (though they are not conducting the abortion business so far as we know).
But this is a huge development for us. Everyone is beginning to realize that Planned Parenthood has practiced deception upon the City of Aurora. An editorial in the Aurora Beacon today sharply criticized Planned Parenthood for their lies. The media are no longer speaking about a “review” of the permit process; they’re using words like fraud and deceit.
As for me, I’m going farther than that. I consider the entire Gemini/Planned Parenthood project from start to finish to be poisoned with deceit, and I’m calling for the City to have the building demolished. Here are my remarks from the City Council meeting last night:
Remarks to the Aurora City Council, September 25, 2007
My name is Eric Scheidler and I live at 839 Garfield Avenue.
Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area CEO Steve Trombley has claimed that Planned Parenthood built their structure at 3051 E. New York Street secretly in order to avoid opposition—even harassment and violence—from what he calls “anti-choice extremists.”
Today we have discovered the real reason Planned Parenthood came into town behind the mask of Gemini Office Development, a for-profit limited liability company.
Planned Parenthood was trying to avoid having to obtain a “special use permit” as required by the City Code. That was the true purpose of their deception—and they almost got away with it.
I call your attention Land Use Category 6630: “Social Service Agencies, Charitable Organizations, Health Related Facilities, and similar uses when not operated for pecuniary profit.”
This descriptions conforms precisely to every public statement Planned Parenthood has made about what they do—in letters to the City Council, in their full page ads in the Beacon, in statements to the press, and in their arguments before Federal Judge Charles Norgle.
The laws of this City require Planned Parenthood to obtain a special use permit in order to occupy and use the building at 3051 E. New York Street, a process requiring public notice in a local paper, public hearings, and written notice to nearby residents of the intended special use.
They have done none of these things. Moreover, we all know—and Steve Trombley even admits—that it was always their intention to operate a not-for-profit medical facility at this location.
Gemini/Planned Parenthood’s failure to obtain a special use permit renders the entire permitting and process illegal from start to finish. Every brick, every sheet of “bullet proof glass,” every blade of grass being protected by that dangerous fencing erected along the sidewalk was placed in violation of the law.
Planned Parenthood cannot occupy this building. They cannot be suffered even to sell it to someone else and profit by their mockery of this City Council, of our Mayor, of our Laws and of Justice itself.
And so I call upon the City to immediately revoke all of Gemini/Planned Parenthood’s permits and privileges and order Gemini/Planned Parenthood to demolish the unlawfully constructed building at 3051 E. New York Street.
Nothing less than demolition can adequately punish the sinister deception practiced upon this City by Planned Parenthood and deter any other outfit from attempting a similar scheme.
Let me close by emphasizing that the issue of the special use permit—which is clearly required for a business like Planned Parenthood to operate anywhere in the City of Aurora—has only come to light this very day.
The question of whether certain permits or statements to the Planning and Development Committee were fraudulent is answered decisively in light of this new discovery. The entire process was illegal, because no special use permit was ever obtained as required by law.
And so I repeat: the Planned Parenthood building at 3051 E. New York Street must be demolished.
