Articles Posted in Zoning and Land Use Law

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An appellate court found a zoning board was arbitrary when it refused to hear an area variance application for the same property which had been denied an area variance nearly twenty years earlier. On April 25, 2006 the Appellate Division Second Department, in Matter of Moore v. Town of Islip Board of Appeals, held that while a zoning board may decline to rehear an application in the absence of new facts, it may not refuse to hear an application where there has been a substantial change in circumstances.

In this case there was an application to build a house on a substandard lot and a similar application had been denied previously. Yet, there was a new property owner and more importantly the application sought fewer variances and eliminated a proposed two car garage. The Court remitted the matter to the zoning board for reconsideration in view of the Court’s findings.

Interestingly the Court did not point out that when the original application was made the legal criteria for granting an area variance was much more stringent than the present criteria. Perhaps this factor by itself is a sufficient change in circumstances to warrant a rehearing?

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The Village of Mamaroneck has indicated that it will be appealing the recent decision of the United States District Court, which found that the Village had violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) when it denied an application to expand the Westchester Day School (see our March 8, 2006 post for a summary of the decision). As reported in the media (http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060331/NEWS02/603310336/1018) the Day School has indicated it will be seeking five million dollars in damages, including attorney fees. The Village has reportedly spent more than eight hundred thousand dollars on its attorneys. The next step will be the Second Circuit Court of Appeals which has already seen the case once before. Previously, the Circuit Court reversed a finding in favor of the Day School declaring that the District Court should have conducted a trial before finding for the Day School. The recent decision was made after trial.

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On March 14, 2006 the Appellate Division Second Department rejected the issuance of a Negative Declaration under SEQRA in the case Matter of Avy v. Town of Amenia. In upholding the findings of the State Supreme Court, the Appellate Division found that by approving an amendment to the local zoning ordinance, which would have allowed an automobile repair service on a lot previously zoned residential, the Amenia Town Board, as lead agency, failed to take the required “hard look” at all the potentially significant environmental impacts.

Despite the fact that the Town Board spent about a year and a half “reviewing” this proposal the Court noted that the EAF for the project identified fourteen areas of potentially large impacts including removal of 1.65 acres of vegetation, 3000 cubic yards of material, storm water runoff, odors, noise and endangered flora and fauna. While the Board held public hearings it never required more than a revised Environmental Assessment Form (EAF). The Court found the Board failed to adequately address the potential impacts on a vital aquifer, the removal of substantial vegetation and the potential impacts upon endangered flora and fauna.

In the past courts have held that an EAF can provide sufficient information to allow a negative declaration in some circumstances. Yet, the clear message here is that, when there are multiple areas of potentially large impacts, it is safer to spend a year and a half preparing and reviewing an environmental impact statement than spending a year and a half trying to avoid preparing one. At the end of the day, the requirement of a “hard look” at environmental impacts before issuing a negative declaration is still the rule.

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In applying RLUIPA to the decision by the Village of Mamaroneck Zoning Board of Appeals that denied a special permit to the Westchester Day School, the District Court responded to criticism contained in an earlier decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals which remanded the District Court’s finding of an RLUIPA violation. Judge Connor found that the Zoning Board not only violated RLUIPA but violated the long standing rule under New York Law favoring both religious and educational uses.

Finding that the denial of the special permit substantially burdened the religious exercise of the Day School, the Court noted that under RLUIPA once there is a substantial burden on religious exercise the burden of proof shifts to the Zoning Board to demonstrate that the denial was in furtherance of a compelling state interest. The Court found that the Zoning Board had based its denial on claims of potential adverse impacts on traffic, parking, local property values and aesthetics. However, the Court determined that the traffic concerns were based upon the lay opinion of members of the Board and particularly the chair who admitted during trial that he had misunderstood several significant portions of the study. The Court repeatedly pointed out that the Board’s own traffic experts had not questioned the traffic study submitted by the school. As to parking it was pointed out by the Court that the School had actually reduced the number of parking spaces based upon recommendations by the Village and could have provided additional spaces if needed. The Court questioned the conclusions regarding property values and aesthetics and determined that even if such impacts existed they did not rise to a compelling state interest, which is required to defeat a RLUIPA claim.

The Second Circuit had remanded the original decision of the District Court on a motion for summary judgment finding that there were questions of fact and also suggesting that the District Court’s application of RLUIPA might be over broad. Therefore the decision was rendered after a seven day bench trial. Apparently in an effort to give the Second Circuit a basis for upholding its decision, even if the Second Circuit questioned the application of RLUIPA, the Court pointed out that New York case law favors both educational and religious uses. It therefore found that under New York Law the Day School qualified for consideration of the recognized beneficial effects as either a religious or an educational use and the Zoning Board had failed to establish a basis for denying the special permit use. It also noted that New York Law favors accommodating such uses and the record demonstrated that even were there concerns with respect to the application the Zoning Board could have approved the application with appropriate mitigating conditions.

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The long awaited decision in the case of the Westchester Day School v.The Village of Mamaroneck Zoning Board of Appeals has been issued by Judge Connor of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. In a 160 page decision Judge Connor found that the Zoning Board had placed a substantial burden on religious exercise by placing restrictions on the enlargement of the school facilities.

The case is reported in the media at http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060304/NEWS02/603040340/1026/NEWS10. Counsel to the Village has already expressed an intention to appeal. We will have further comment on the decision, after we have had an opportunity to study the entire decision.

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In a December, 2005 decision the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of Omnipoint Communications against the City of White Plains. Omnipoint had been denied a permit to construct a 150 foot wireless communications tower on a local golf course. The Court noted that if supported by substantial evidence the decision of the local board was entitled to deference from the Court.

In reversing the decision of the district court, the Circuit Court noted that the tower would rise to three times the height of the tallest evergreen tree and “half again as tall as any other tree in the area”. Therefore it was held that the local board could reasonably conclude the tower would be “widely visible”. The Court found the study conducted by Omnipoint was flawed as it was taken only from public areas and not from residential back yards or second story windows of homes.

Perhaps most significantly the Court noted that the local board was free to reject the report of Omnipoint’s “expert” and credit the testimony of local residents and their landscape architect who had “limited qualifications” to address the issue. It noted that in the Second Circuit there was no requirement to use expert studies to support a local decision. Rather the Board could rely on the “aesthetic objections raised by neighbors who know the local terrain and the sightlines of their own homes” in reaching its decision.

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The Village of Suffern New York has been sued under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) by an Orthodox Jewish group that maintains a home for Orthodox Jews visiting relatives and friends at nearby Good Samaritan Hospital. The group, which was denied a use variance, has received several violations for activities that are not conforming to the single family residence zone. The property is used to house Orthodox Jews, whose religious observance does not permit them to drive on the Sabbath, so that they may stay overnight and walk to the hospital in order to visit the sick. The group complains that the Village’s actions substantially interfere with their religious exercise, which commands them to visit the sick but also not to drive on the Sabbath.

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The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court decided a trilogy of cases on December 27, 2005 relating to a series of determinations by the City of New Rochelle Zoning Board of Appeals to permit construction of an addition to a local religious institution. The cases, Halperin v. Zoning Bd. of Appeals, Richmond v. Zoning Bd. of Appeals and Halperin v. City of New Rochelle broke little new ground but are significant in that together they cover a number of issues related to variances, the standard of review of determinations by zoning boards, the deference accorded religious uses and standards for review under SEQRA, including cumulative impacts and when a supplemental environmental impact statement is required.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the decisions is the holding in Halperin v. City of New Rochelle that a variance for off street parking is an area variance when the proposed uses are otherwise permitted as of right. One argument had been that a variance for off street parking was a use variance requiring the more exacting standards for the granting of use variances. Agreement by the Court with this somewhat novel contention would have made many variance requests, that are otherwise routinely granted, extremely difficult to obtain.

Another potentially significant aspect of the ruling is the Court’s view of cumulative impact review. The Court also held that SEQRA does not mandate a review of cumulative impacts of other nearby developments when those developments are unrelated and not part of a common overall development plan.

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The Court of Appeals remanded a case involving New York City’s adult business zoning regulations for further hearings on whether so called 60/40 businesses should be regulated as adult businesses due to adverse secondary impacts on nearby properties and neighborhoods. The action by For the People Theatres of New York, Inc. challenged New York’s 2001 zoning amendments which attempted to control establishments which evaded the regulations on businesses that have a “substantial portion” of the business devoted to adult uses by maintaining so called 60/40 uses with 60 percent allegedly non-adult uses. The Court noted that the information submitted by the Plaintiff’s experts did not resolve the issue but merely shifted the burden to the City to prove secondary adverse impacts. The Court remanded the matter to provide the City with an opportunity to submit evidence of secondary impacts.

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On December 5, 2005 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case of Brody v. Village of Port Chester back to the District Court on the issue of whether Brody had actual notice of the proceedings and procedures under New York Eminent Domain Procedure Law (“EDPL”) before his property was condemned by the Village. In a case that has been bouncing between the District Court and Second Circuit Court of Appeals since the year 2000, the Second Circuit ruled that the EDPL’s procedure for determining whether a decision to condemn property for public use met constitutional muster. However, the Court determined that the notice provisions that existed prior to 2004 were flawed in that they failed to provide notice of the thirty day time limit for challenging a determination that the purpose of a condemnation was for a public use.

On its face the decision would appear to be limited to the facts of this case, as the Court noted the statute, as subsequently amended in 2004, now meets constitutional due process requirements. Yet, the decision of the Court raises interesting issues for other municipal land use determinations. The Court held “the notice sent to affected property owners must make some conspicuous mention of the commencement of the thirty-day review period to satisfy due process”. Does this mean that other land use determinations that implicate property rights must also contain notice of the commencement of a short statute of limitations in addition to the notice of decision required by statute?

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