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Plans for a mosque at Levy Road and Sibley Street in Folsom have touched off questions and debate among city residents on a variety of topics, from the project's funding to the audibility of the five-times-daily call to prayer.

The 31,000-square-foot mos-que was approved May 18 by the Folsom Planning Commission. No residents spoke against the project at that meeting, and no appeals were filed during the 30-day period set aside for objections.

But a recent story in The Bee about the planned mosque prompted dozens of calls to the city, Folsom officials said.

The mosque - to be named Masjid Bilal, after a companion of the Prophet Muhammad - will be the 10th mosque in the Sacramento region, but the first in the region's eastern suburbs. It is expected to draw worshippers from Folsom and surrounding communities.

The structure also will be the first mosque in the Sacramento region to be built from scratch in the traditional dome-and-minaret style. The tip of the minaret will reach 70 feet above the ground.

The mosque is a project of the Islamic Society of Folsom. Most of the congregation's 300 families have moved to the area in the past decade, drawn especially by the region's high-tech job market. About two-thirds of the families have at least one member working at Intel's 6,500-employee Folsom campus, said the group's president, Riaz Siddique.

On Thursday, Siddique responded to questions raised by residents in calls to The Bee, online discussions on myfolsom.com and a door-to-door survey by a reporter in the residential neighborhood closest to the mosque site.

Specifically, Siddique ad-dressed the source of funding for the project and details about the day-to-day operations of the mosque and school.

Siddique said the project will be funded by donations from individuals in the Islamic Society of Folsom congregation and their friends and family elsewhere in the country.

"We do the same reciprocal thing," he said. "Suppose there's a mosque they're building in Florida - we try to help as much as we can."

He stressed that the project is not being funded from overseas and has no institutional sponsors, only private donors.

Siddique said estimates of the project's full cost were unavailable and that fundraising is in progress. His group is completing financing for the project's first phase, including site grading and construction of a retaining wall. He hopes to apply for a building permit within two months, he said, and to have at least some sections of the building ready for use by the summer of 2006.

The mosque building will include a library and a school for students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Siddique said the school now has two grades and is housed in the Islamic Society of Folsom's offices in a small complex on Folsom Boulevard. At the new site, one additional grade would be added each year until the student population reached 100 to 120, he said. A small playground will be built at the site.

The call to prayer will not be broadcast regularly through loudspeakers. Such broadcasts are common in the Islamic world, but city ordinances prohibit the broadcast of amplified sound without a special event permit. Siddique said the group might apply to broadcast the call to prayer on certain Islamic holidays.

Residents in a Levy Road neighborhood to the east of the building site expressed a range of feelings about the mosque during a door-to-door survey on Thursday afternoon.

"I wouldn't be crazy about it," Meshelle Fatooh said. She felt that the large, traditionally designed mosque would be out of place. "It would kind of make it like it's not a neighborhood anymore," she said. Two residents who declined to give their names expressed serious concerns about Islam itself.

Others hadn't heard about the project, while four residents said they supported it.

"Freedom of religion is important to me," said Bill Cowley, a Mormon whose congregation worked for years to win approval for a new temple near Lake Natoma, now scheduled for completion next spring. "I think (Folsom's Muslims) have every bit the same rights as we do," he said.

Bridget Quiroz, who was busy getting her children ready for a car ride, said she'd welcome diversity in the neighborhood. "It's good for our kids to know that there are other ethnicities in the world," she said.

Several residents expressed concern about the additional traffic the mosque and school would bring, particularly given the already heavy traffic on Sibley Street and the lack of a traffic signal at the intersection with Levy Road.

A traffic study prepared for the project by MRO Engineers of Rocklin found that a new signal would be "marginally warranted" only during a 15-minute window at the close of the Friday midday prayer service. The report did not recommend a new signal.

Folsom Community Development Director Michael Johnson and project planner Jane Talbot could not be reached for further comment on the traffic issue on Thursday or Friday.

A measure of opposition to the project should come as no surprise, said Metwalli Amer, chairman of the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims. Amer's group built a mosque across from American River College in 1993. Sacramento County approved the project unanimously, he said, despite objections from some nearby residents about the mosque's effects on property values for one thing.

"People are apprehensive because the Muslims are in the spotlight and (because of) what is happening overseas. But, really, I hope that Americans would realize that ... we are just Americans who happen to be Muslim."

On the issue of lowered property values, Amer said his group's mosque does not appear to have hurt the neighborhood. His group paid $90,000 for its 2.5-acre site in the early 1990s. The last empty half-acre lot near the mosque recently sold for $300,000, he said, while homes in the neighborhood now typically sell for $1 million.