The Issues

Residents challenge Woodbury rezoning By Tony Houston
Highland Mills - To build or not to build, that is the question in the Town of Woodbury.
Zoning and land development, always a dominant issue there, has become white hot — with three of the town residents suing over the matter.
The year 1988 is as good a time as any to begin this tale, although the last two years are when the excitement takes place. Woodbury adopted its current Master Plan in March 1988.
The Planning Board, appointed by the elected Town Board, has the authority to approve or deny land development applications. In doing so, the Planning Board referred to both the zoning laws passed by the Town Board and the Master Plan written by the Planning Board itself.
An amendment to the Town Law of the State of New York changes the “Master Plan” to a “Comprehensive Plan,” which is to be prepared and adopted by the elected Town Board. This leaves the Planning Board with a narrower role of interpreting the zoning laws and Comprehensive Plan — both written by others.
Like the Master Plan, a Comprehensive Plan includes goals and objectives and the principles and practices to achieve them; finer details are left to the zoning laws. The Woodbury Town Board set out to write a Comprehensive Plan in July 2004.
That November, representatives of Rockland County developer Bill Brodsky of Carteret Group, Inc., asked the Town Board to amend the zoning law. The amendments, passed a year later on Nov. 3, 2005, as Local Laws 4 through 8, allowed for Brodsky’s Woodbury Suburban Project (WP3) located between Dunderberg and Nininger Roads and for increased development throughout the town.
It took 30 years, from 1973 to 2003, for Woodbury’s population to double from 5,000 to 10,000. Local Laws 4 through 8 would have the effect of an immediate pursuit of the 20,000 mark.
The allowed housing units on the 400-acre WP3 project would increase from 147 or 175 to 451, 460 or 652 — depending upon who is doing the counting. Among the other effects of the new local laws would be to allow 281 units on two-acre lots in the Legacy Ridge project, up from 164 units on three-acre lots.
Enough already, said John Seyferth, Karin Ungerer and Don Siebold, who on last Dec. 4 filed an Article 78 lawsuit against the Town Board, Planning Board and developer.
These Woodbury residents are asking a state Supreme Court judge to “annul, vacate, and in all aspects void” the Town Board’s enactment of zoning amendments contained in Local Laws 4 through 8 and the Town Board’s statement of findings pursuant to the State Environmental Quality Review Act for the WP3 project.
Siebold is an appointed member of the Town of Woodbury’s Zoning Board of Appeals and, like his fellow petitioners, Siebold lives in the vicinity of the WP3 project. “My only concern is to preserve the character of the Town by controlled growth and not over-development, and being able to afford to live in Woodbury,” said Siebold. “The Town never mitigated the traffic.”
The Woodbury Town Board passed Local Laws 4 through 8 while it was working not only on a Comprehensive Plan, but on an Open Space Plan as well.
Released during this time was a draft of the Southeastern Orange County Traffic and Land Use Study, which recommended that the Town of Woodbury “reduce permitted intensity of residential development on land located along the north side of Dunderberg Road/Nininger Road,” just the opposite of the new local laws.
Included in the Article 78 legal papers is a Nov. 17, 2005, letter from Orange County Planning Commissioner David Church, Orange County Commissioner of Planning, in which “the petitions to rezone the subject properties (Local Laws 6, 7 and 8)” were disapproved. Local Laws 4 and 5 were mentioned in the letter, but were neither approved nor disapproved.
“That was not an oversight,” said Church. “We often remain silent on some of the issues brought to us.”
The letter of disapproval was not received by the Woodbury Town Board prior to its passing Local Laws 4 through 8. A supermajority of four votes of the five-member Town Board is needed to override a recommendation of such a disapproval.
Church’s letter referred to “significant public and private speculation” surrounding the potential sale and annexation of the 400-acre WP3 properties to the Village of Kiryas Joel if the new Woodbury local laws were not enacted. Church favored the analysis of alternative “as a means of comparing and contrasting significant adverse and beneficial environmental impacts with that of the preferred 451-unit alternative.”
The town made no such analysis, although it would have improved its case for amending the zoning laws.
The petitioners list three courses of action. The first is that the Town Board acted too soon, despite the four yes votes, by not allowing 30 days to pass after its October 21 submittal to the county. The second is that Local Laws 4 through 8 do not conform to the Town’s 1988 Master Plan. The Master Plan remains in effect until superseded by a Comprehensive Plan that has yet to be passed by the Town Board. The third cause of action would be that the Town Board failed to comply with the procedural and substantive requirements of SEQRA.
Five days after the passage of Local Laws 4 through 8, a new supervisor and a new councilman were elected to the Woodbury Town Board. The new board was seated in January of this year.
If Local Laws 4 through 8 are voided by the court, a re-vote could be quite different.
Town Supervisor John Burke defeated incumbent Sheila Conroy, who cast one of the four “yes” votes. He said this week that he didn’t know how far the lawsuit had gotten in the legal process.
“I’ve heard nothing about it since the December filing of the suit,” said Burke.
When asked about a possible re-vote if the petitioners won in court, Burke said “that is speculation — we’ll cross that bridge if and when we get there. The Town Board will sit down and decide where to go once the court rules.”

Town Board critic taking the helm as new supervisor

By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
cmckenna@th-record.com

Woodbury - His new seat might get hot in the days ahead. But the small, bare office John Burke now occupies in a corner of Woodbury Town Hall felt cold yesterday morning as he settled into his new job, clad in sweater and jeans.

Burke, who beat former Supervisor Sheila Conroy in an election two months ago, started work Sunday and will be sworn in tonight, taking his place on a Town Board he's more accustomed to questioning from the audience, particularly during this past rancorous year.

Only two days after picking up his keys to Town Hall, the retired high school principal faced his first local-government challenge: a storm that dumped 8 or more inches of wet snow on Woodbury's roads and required mobilization of the plows.

Maybe that was an omen.

More difficult plowing lies ahead, including working with three board members who support a 451-home development proposal that Burke and others spent the last year fighting - a controversy that lingers on, thanks to a court challenge.

Once a board critic, Burke will now feel its pain: by day, fielding calls from irate residents and managing a $15 million budget and more than 100 employees; by night, catching flak at board meetings.

It won't be all headaches: Burke said the town's department heads have welcomed him and given him tours since his election victory.

But as the only Democrat on a five-member board, he might find himself on the losing end of votes, especially those involving land-use decisions.

"I plan on maintaining my positions, knowing full well that five people vote," Burke said yesterday. "I've not given up my right to make an individual vote on things I feel very strongly about."

Maybe the thorniest issue of all on the horizon is a potential land war with neighboring Kiryas Joel.

Burke said he's willing to meet with Kiryas Joel leaders but sounds no more willing than his predecessor to consider a compromise that would allow the Hasidic community's high-density housing to spread into Woodbury's rural fringe.

That goes for any annexation of Woodbury land into Kiryas Joel: "If the solution is for part of Woodbury to be no longer be part of Woodbury, I'm not interested."

Friday, March 25, 2005
Bending zoning rules in Woodbury might have benefits

By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
cmckenna@th-record.com

Woodbury – The controversy du jour in a town full of them is known as "the zoning changes," in the shorthand of some of the people arguing about them.
It refers to requests by two developers to loosen the town's zoning rules to increase the number of homes they can build in two gated communities they want to erect on opposite sides of town.
Among the purported benefits offered in return are large tracts of dedicated open space and improvements to the town's water and sewer systems.
Since the requests surfaced in November, the Town Board, which must decide on them, has held hearings to field initial concerns and begun overseeing environmental reviews for each project that could take months, if not years, to complete.
Officially, the board has no position on the projects, which would total 731 homes. Supervisor Sheila Conroy assures residents the reviews will be thorough and open to the public and must answer any major concerns, such as traffic.
"This is going to take time, and it guarantees input from the public," she said at the end of the board meeting last Thursday. "Let's go through the process and see what it says."
But critics have been flaying the board.
In their view, the board has already signaled its support and is rushing toward a foregone conclusion. They've called for more public hearings, a referendum, a delay while the town revises its master plan – anything to stop the process trudging forward.
"It smacks of back-room politics," said Aimee Fitzgerald, who lives in Central Valley near one of the projects involved – 450-home Woodbury Suburban. "And the public was never consulted about whether it wanted high-density changes in their master plan."
The Woodbury Suburban developer asked for a zoning break to allow 450 homes, instead of the 175 allowed under current zoning. The developer behind the Legacy Ridge project in northern Woodbury wants to build 281 homes instead of 164.
Conroy said in an interview yesterday that the board had no legal obligation to consider the requests but saw enough potential benefits – such as senior-citizen units in the Woodbury Suburban project and open space in both – to go forward.
"We said we were willing to look at these projects because there were some things we liked about them," she said.
She pointed out that, on a personal level, she lives near one of the proposed communities – Legacy Ridge – and would prefer to keep the unblemished view she's had for 26 years.
And she emphasized that the projects could shrink as the developers go through the environmental reviews and adjust to various limitations.
Critics, meanwhile, are unmoved by the perceived benefits, especially open space.
"Land you can't build on," Fitzgerald said with disgust. "You put it behind a gate and call it a gift to the people of Woodbury."