The hubbub over the steeple height of the Fairview Texas Temple is bubbling up again.
A new mayor and new town council launched a campaign Monday to pressure leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to agree to lower the height of the temple’s steeple — again.
The Council voted 5-2 in April 2025 to approve a 120-foot steeple and spire for the temple, which North Texas Latter-day Saints say is desperately needed in the region.
“Some people think the issue was resolved when the Town Council approved the temple permit last year. It wasn’t,” Fairview Mayor John Hubbard said Monday at a news conference at town hall.
Hubbard launched “FairviewSpeaks,” which is described as a community campaign to ask church leaders to modify the steeple’s height again. The effort includes yard signs that say, “LDS Church: Please be a good neighbor; 120 feet doesn’t fit Fairview.”
It also includes a letter-writing campaign to the church’s three-member First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
The church described the campaign as “an attempt to pressure the church to change the Fairview Temple plan that the Fairview Town Council approved in April 2025,” according to a statement released Monday.
The church initially proposed a steeple that would reach 173 feet. During mediation in November 2024, the church offered to reduce the steeple’s height to 120 feet. The town council — including Mayor Hubbard — unanimously agreed.
“The approved temple plan was a compromise made during joint mediation, which significantly reduced the height and size of the Fairview Temple,” Monday’s church statement said. “The church broke ground on the temple in February of 2026 and will proceed in full accordance with the agreed upon plan. The church negotiated in good faith, accepted significant compromises, and will continue to honor the agreement that was lawfully reached by both parties.”
The eight-acre temple site on Fairview’s main thoroughfare is now surrounded by fences as workers prepare the grounds for construction, local church spokeswoman Melissa McKneely said.
Months after the mediation agreement, Mayor Hubbard was one of the two town councilors who voted against the conditional use permit in April 2025.
Mayor Hubbard sent a letter on May 20 to every member of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve asking them to reconsider the steeple’s height.
Elder Steven R. Bangerter, executive director of the Temple Department, responded with a letter that said the church will proceed with the temple design approved by the Fairview Town Council.
Mayor Hubbard mistakenly characterized Elder Bangerter as a church employee during his press conference on Monday.
“What we received was a letter from an employee,” he said. “We would like to talk to someone (who is) in leadership.”
Elder Bangerter is a General Authority Seventy. Seventies are full-time church leaders who minister under assignment by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Before becoming a general church leader in 2018, Elder Bangerter was an attorney who specialized in representing churches.
Mayor Hubbard conceded Monday that the church’s plans for the temple and its steeple meet Fairview’s legal requirements and that the church has a legal building permit in hand. Some residents sued the church and town council in 2025, but the court ruled that fewer than 20% of neighboring property owners filed a formal protest.
The Collin County District Court judge ruled in December that the conditional use permit the Fairview Town Council granted the church was legal.
“They have every right, right now, to build (to) 120 feet,” Hubbard said. But, he added, “It just doesn’t fit into the character of the town of Fairview. It’s just too big.”
In essence, FairviewSpeaks is a Hail Mary project. Hubbard said the media campaign is meant to be conducted with love and respect.
“I’m here today on behalf of my friends and neighbors who are upset with a 120-foot steeple that will tower over our community once the temple is completed,” he said. “That’s why we’re launching FairviewSpeaks, not to relitigate the past, but to make one more good faith effort while there’s still time.”
He said the hope of a new mayor, a new council and some residents is that the church’s new leader — President Dallin H. Oaks, who was sustained in October 2025 — might make a new decision.
Hubbard and other residents argued that the church would be more community-minded if it reduced the steeple height to 70 feet, something the church did for the Yorba Linda California Temple while President Russell M. Nelson was church president.
The church’s position is that it already acted in good faith and with the community in mind when it reduced the Fairview steeple to 120 feet, McKneely said.
With the exception of one area reserved for commercial buildings, Fairview is a bedroom community zoned for residences capped at a height of 35 feet. Every church in the town exceeds that height, even though all of them were built in residential zones. That’s because the law calls for the town council to grant exceptions for churches, schools and other essential structures like water towers.
Collin County is religiously diverse. It is dotted by churches with tall steeples, including a 68-foot steeple for the Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in Fairview, adjacent to the temple site.
Still, Fairview resident Pamela Sailor said she and her neighbors value their flat, beautiful country surroundings.
“Reach out. Take our hand,” another Fairview resident, Jack Desimone, said in a message to Latter-day Saints at the press conference. “Show us that you want to be a good neighbor in our community because that’s the kind of people we are here, and that’s the kind of people that we look forward to accepting in the future.”
Sandra Ahlin joined others in worrying about ongoing division over the steeple height.
“I am curious if (church leaders) have really considered that once they have built the temple here — and if they build it to all the specifications that they want to build it to — and then they leave and there are members that are left here ... well, I hope not, but maybe they will feel the fallout of that decision.”
She said that isn’t what the neighborhood around the temple is about, but said, “It could be kind of a hard thing. I would hope not, but it could be.”
McKneely, the church’s local spokeswoman, shared dismay over the ongoing opposition.
“It’s discouraging they are launching a pressure campaign against the church,” she said. “We will honor the mediation agreement we made. We received a permit to build, we broke ground and we’re building. We’re looking forward to having a beautiful temple in that community.”