Mayor Jay Knudtson's comments on court's decision in New Life case

Cape Girardeau Mayor Jay Knudston submitted the following statement in response to the Southeast Missourian's request for comment to a federal judge's ruling in the New Life Evangelistic Center case against the Department of Health and Human Services.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the department to review again an application by New Life to use the old federal building on Broadway as a homeless shelter. The department originally rejected the application in May.

Knudtson response

"Obviously the city of Cape Girardeau is extremely disappointed with the courts recent decision. That being said, we do understand that there is a formalized process for reviewing applications such as this, and we look forward to fully cooperating with HHS as they again evaluate the Rev. Rice's request."

"This recent court decision does nothing more than re-engage HHS in the review process and I am confident that we can, once again, mobilize all the stakeholders within our community and establish the fact that there simply isn't a need to award a 48,000 square foot facility to address homeless issues within our community. We take great pride in being a compassionate community and all the various agencies and stakeholders do a wonderful job of addressing these issues. We look forward to again demonstrating that the City of Cape Girardeau is meeting the needs of our citizens."

"Unfortunately, this decision to remand back to HHS will cause a serious delay in the development and sale of the building and this is very unfortunate but we respect the process."