Bruce made her comments Tuesday in response to a Sun Post News article in which spokeswomen for the San Clemente Homeless Task Force announced that St. Clement's had turned down their proposal for a shelter this winter at the church.

The proposal for a shelter at St. Clement's appeared on Wednesday night's City Council agenda as a request from city housing coordinator Leslie Davis for $7,500 in city redevelopment agency housing funds to help pay for a security guard for the shelter.

In a report to the council, Davis outlined the proposal for a five-night-per-week shelter and enclosed an Oct. 21 letter from Bruce to county housing officials, stating that the vestry had approved operation of a homeless shelter at the church this winter on condition that a security guard be hired.

The letter did not define how often such a shelter would be open.

The Sun Post News tried to reach Bruce while preparing Tuesday's article but couldn't. Tuesday she said she had been tied up at meetings, but she wanted the community to know that St. Clement's had only provisionally agreed to the shelter. Bruce said she only wrote the Oct. 21 letter at Davis' behest to help secure county funding.

Bruce said she notified the city early last week that the vestry could not provide facilities for the type of shelter requested. Still, the shelter proposal made it onto this week's City Council agenda as if it were a set-to-go program, only in need of funding help from the council.

Davis said she was on vacation last week, and the item should have been pulled from the council agenda, which was prepared then. Unfortunately, she said, it wasn't.

Davis said the St. Clement's vestry had supported the cold-weather shelter but had been divided over the regularly scheduled one. The church wanted a security guard, and the task force was prepared to provide one but not on an irregular basis.

``We couldn't call security just when the weather turned cold,'' Davis said. ``We had to have a contract for certain days.''

She said she has found that shelters need designated days of operation ``so you can get your volunteers and paid staff.''

Bruce said the vestry was split over the issue. ``It's not that we didn't want to do this,'' she said. ``The cold-weather shelter they were prepared to approve. We have always been very socially responsible here and done outreach for the community.''

St. Clement's has operated cold-weather shelters in previous years, Bruce said, but the concept supported by the church morphed into something more.

``They wanted to do it every day,'' she said. ``We don't have that much room. Every day is a lot. They said OK, five days, and we'll limit who can be there. We said a tentative OK, but we need to think about that. They said a four-week trial. Then it morphed into 11 weeks. It became much bigger than we were prepared for.''