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The Washington, D.C.-based American Humanist Association has bid $1,000 for the 30-by-30-foot parcel and included a check for the full amount. The Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation topped that with a $1,200 bid.
The Holmen Lions Club discussed purchasing the property at its April 21 meeting, but club President Scott Marshall declined to divulge details.
“That information is not public at this time,” Marshall said. “I can’t comment on it.”
The village board’s Finance and Personnel Committee will have first crack at the issue when it meets at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Village Hall, 421 S. Main St. The committee is expected to discuss the matter in closed session before voting in open session on a recommendation to the full board.
The board had decided to sell the land to avoid litigation after a Holmen resident lodged a complaint about the lighted cross display in early March. The village has owned the blufftop land on which the 40-foot cross stands for five years, and Eric Barnes, an assistant physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, asserted that amounts to government endorsement of Christianity, violating the separation of church and state.
Rather than get involved in litigation, the board indicated it planned to sell the property to the Lions Club, which was involved in erecting the display in 1960.
A village-ordered appraisal valued the property at $100.
Even if the Lions Club submits a bid of only $100, the village wouldn’t be required by law to sell the land to the highest bidder, said Cheryl Gill, an attorney with the La Crosse-based law firm Johns, Flaherty and Collins.
Municipalities are not re-quired to take bids when they sell public property, Gill said.
If the village turns down a $1,200 offer in favor of a $100 offer, a taxpayer could sue: “That might be considered an abuse of discretion,” Gill said, but that would be the only way to challenge the board’s decision.
Repeated phone messages and e-mails to Village Admini-strator Catherine Schmit produced no response. Village President John Chapman said he’d “rather not comment” on the Star Hill sale “because it’s such a contentious issue.”
Annie Laurie Gaylor,
co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said she had a difficult time dealing with village officials while trying to submit the group’s bid. For example, the address of the Star Hill property was required for the bid document, but she got nowhere by calling.
“They are very, very unhelpful,” Gaylor said. “Nobody would give it to me over the phone. Nobody was there who knew anything.”
The Lions Club has made no secret it intends to buy the property to preserve the star and cross display. The FFRF and the AHA both have been clear they would remove the display, with Gaylor saying the star would go, too.
“We would take them down, and maybe we could sell them to somebody,” Gaylor said.
AHA spokesman Fred Edwords said the cross would be taken down but that the group would consider keeping the star if it was lit all year and not just at Christmas time.
“We want to have the least impact on the village,” Edwords said. “Our end purpose is merely to make it clear that religious symbols belong on private and church property.”
Bob Ritter, an attorney for AHA, said the $100 appraisal might be a fair price for the amount of land involved, but that appraisal doesn’t include the star/cross monument. Not including that, he said, is like appraising a residential lot without including the value of the house on it.
Ritter also said he takes issue with the Holmen Lions Club’s endorsement of one religion, since Lions Club International policy states the organization is secular. Ritter called the national Lions Club organization to ask whether it would take any action against the Holmen club but did not hear back.
“I don’t think they’re interested in talking to us,” Ritter said.
Both Ritter and Gaylor said litigation is a possibility if the Lions Club wins possession of the land with a lower bid. But even if the challenge went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, it still wouldn’t settle the controversy over of separation of church and state, Ritter said.
The only way to get a definitive answer, he said, would be to pass an amendment to the Constitution.
Randy Erickson is editor of the Holmen Courier.
