Judge orders approval of 8,947-square-foot house: Town attorney appeals decision
N.Y. State Supreme Court Justice Stephen Hackeling has ordered the town to issue a special permit allowing Crescent Beach, LLC to proceed with residential construction at 11 Serpentine Drive.
Town Attorney Stephen Kiely has filed a notice of appeal to the decision.
The development plan on an 8.8-acre site calls for a single-family dwelling with a pool, pool deck, pool house, three-car garage, generator, transformer and multiple retaining walls. Buildings on the lot would occupy 12,150 square feet, when town code limits construction to 5,999 square feet of living space.
Mr. Kiely’s argument for banning a vote on the application is based on the town’s current moratorium on construction of residential buildings that exceed the town code limit.
Attorney John Bennett of Southampton’s Bennett & Read obtained the order arguing the town must issue the special permit that would allow construction to begin because it was long delayed by the town and the week before a public hearing was scheduled to be held on the project, Mr. Kiely told him it was taken off the May 16 Town Board agenda because the Town Board was about to enact the moratorium.
In his written opinion, Judge Hackeling said every one of 38 applications for residential construction larger than what the code allows have been granted. That included an application for a property at 149 North Ram Island Road where previous owners had finished a basement without a permit. The new owners were seeking to legalize work and were allowed to do so, but assessed a major fine to which they agreed.
The opinion cited the need for decisions by the town government not to be “arbitrary” and “capricious” and supported Mr. Bennett’s argument that by refusing to move the application forward, it was acting in bad faith.
“The town’s refusal to undertake to grant or deny its building permit application for approximately 39 months violates the New York State and federal constitutional requirements of due process,” the judge wrote, calling the lack of action “illegal.”
Mr. Bennett told the Reporter that the application had approval from the town Planning Board, the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Suffolk County Planning Commission. “There is such a thing as process,” Mr. Bennett said, charging the Town Board had failed to follow the procedures required. The application was in the hopper for two-and-a-half years and deserved a vote, he said.
In an emailed response, Mr. Kiely said the town was “blindsided” by the issuance of a decision when it was “pursuing a potential resolution to the matter in good faith, with the full knowledge and at the direction of the court. We are confident that the Appellate Division will see just that and afford the town its rightful opportunity to address the merits, which we believe weigh in the town’s favor,” he said. Mr. Kiely has six months to file the necessary paperwork for a review by the court on whether or not to enforce the order handed down on Aug. 18.
