A planned temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remains on hold, as the City of Cody has yet to issue a building permit for the project.

“We’re just kind of working on things,” Mayor Matt Hall said Wednesday, declining to provide more detail.

Following a series of contentious public meetings, Cody’s Planning, Zoning and Adjustment Board gave its last approval to the temple project on Aug. 8. However, Hall directed staff to hold off on issuing a permit ahead of Tuesday’s Cody City Council meeting, where the council discussed the project behind closed doors.

Council members took no action when they exited the executive session and on Wednesday, the permit remained in limbo.

“It’s still sitting down there in the planning office,” Hall said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, a dozen people addressed the topic during an unusually long public comment period. Most were members of the LDS church, who expressed gratitude to the planning board for its review of the project and hope that the community can “heal” after a divisive process.

Church member Noma Walton, who lives near the proposed temple, said Cody is a good place, where people can disagree.

“We can still be friends, we can still be neighbors. Cody is going to be OK,” Walton said. “And I really hope Cody is going to be OK with a beautiful temple.”

However, Councilman Don Shreve later questioned if Cody was going to be all right.

“The way my phone has blown up, the emails that I get, there’s a scar in this community right now,” Shreve said.

The councilman added that he was pleased to hear church members express a desire for healing “and recognize that that scar is there.”

“If you truly mean that, I would recommend to you to reach out to those citizens that might be opposed to your project and talk about the tower height with them,” Shreve said. “Do something to heal the community.”

The proposed 100-foot, 11-inch tower has been the most controversial feature of the 9,950 square foot temple. The site off Skyline Drive is located in a Rural Residential Zoning District, which includes a 30-foot limit on building height.

City Planner Todd Stowell initially advised the church that it would need a special height exemption for the tower, but later determined it wasn’t subject to the limit. The planning board disagreed, but the church took the decision off the table by withdrawing its request for an exemption.

Despite the withdrawal — and filing two legal challenges to the board’s decisions — church officials offered to lower the tower to 85 feet. Three of the board’s six participating members supported that compromise last week, but the other three did not. The ultimate swing vote, board member Kim Borer, said she felt the church’s attorneys presented the deal “as an ultimatum, and I don’t like to be bullied.”

Borer later joined a 4-2 vote to approve the temple’s site plan without the compromise. However, other board members, the church and city staff say that had the effect of allowing the church to proceed with the original 101-foot-high tower.

Some ambiguity remains, though. Given that the 101-foot tower was never explicitly approved by the board, a group of neighbors who want the temple built elsewhere say the 30-foot limit still applies. Members of Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods are still mulling whether to file an appeal and take their arguments to district court.

In a Wednesday interview, Terry Skinner described the group as “upset and frustrated at this whole process,” saying the city failed to protect its citizens, municipal code and master plan.

At Tuesday’s meeting, temple critic N.J. Pawley argued the views of local residents opposed to the project should have held sway.

“If we as the majority can’t dictate what happens in this tiny little town in this tiny little county in this country, what chance do we have of having any kind of good representation at the state level or at the national level?” Pawley said, later suggesting, “We might as well be divorced as a nation.”

In contrast, church member Brooke Grant said Cody is a place where people from different denominations pull together.

“I just hope that we can keep that sense of inclusion, and welcome everybody here …,” Grant said.

The president of the church’s Cody Wyoming Stake, Andy Jacobsen, said he felt bad about how challenging the planning process has been for the community and expressed hope that “we can mend those fences.”

Another member of the Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods group, Carla Egelhoff, suggested the division and hard feelings could be eliminated if the church simply picked a different location.

“I’m not against it: I want this denomination to have their temple,” Egelhoff said, but “they can be just as peaceful and just as serene and just as beautiful in an appropriate location. They don’t have to get that beauty by stealing it from the neighbors who live there already.”

Church member Josh George said he initially was “a little bit shocked” by the location picked for the temple, but has come to believe that the quiet site “really is the best place.”

“It’s my opinion that this temple will be another gem of Cody — just like the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, just like our good schools, like the rodeo,” he said.

At the close of Tuesday’s meeting, Hall said the council has been concerned about the process and doesn’t want to see the issue “do any more damage … than it already has.”

“We’d like to do anything we can to help move it forward,” he said.

The mayor indicated there could be more clarity on the temple’s building permit in the coming days.