Town officials say not enough signatures for supermajority vote
Rotterdam residents thought they gathered enough signatures to impede a zoning change, but town officials said they came up short.
Residents off Floral Avenue in Rotterdam presented the board with a petition on a zoning changed approved by a 3-2 vote in February for Tom DeLorenzo’s project involving 2.735 acres located at 1066 Curry Road and 1113 Floral Ave. for apartments. If the petition was proved to be valid the Town Board would need a supermajority to grant the change, which would negate the previous vote and presumably leave the resolution voted down without the needed support.
One resident involved with the petition questioned the three resolutions on the agenda regarding the project, because she claimed the project has now been split into two separate projects.
If it had been initially handled as two projects then the homeowners in the town would have followed through with the twenty percent, said Maryann Lawler. `I believe this is extremely misleading and it sets a precedent for the Town Board and for the homeowners to be on alert. What was initiated in fact is changed.`
Town Attorney David Devaprasad contested the project was never separated into two separate parcels. Since the parcels have a common border they must be looked at as one parcel.
`It is because we treated it as one parcel, subject to the zone change, that the petitioners don’t satisfy requirements,` he said `If we were able to treat it as separate parcels then you would have satisfied the requirements under Town Law.`
After evaluating the submitted petition the town’s attorneys decided the names collected didn’t represent the required 20 percent of the surrounding parcels, only 17 percent. Under state case law, said Devaprasad, they were bound to look at it as one parcel, one project.
Supervisor Frank Del Gallo restated the project has remained unchanged.
`When the planning commission sent it up to the board it was as two pieces together, all one unit,` said Del Gallo. `When the petition was drawn up it was brought up two us as two parcels. When we voted on it we voted on it was two parcels as one.`
Audience members verbally disagreed with this statement as an echo of `No` filled the room, but the zone change but DeLorenzo said the zone change filed was for both parcels and the petition did petition both parcels.
`The contesters could have filled a petition saying we only go against one, but they filled a petition against both, therefore their signatures must go against both,` said DeLorenzo.
Another possibly misunderstood requirement was that it wasn’t 20 percent of the surrounding residents, but 20 percent of land owned by the surrounding residents.
`It is not the number of people petitioning, it is the amount of land they own,` said Devaprasad. `We had to do that calculation to see how much of it everybody owned around the whole parcel and we did look at the town tax map and property map and mapped out where the parcels were.`
Even with more than 20 percent of the surrounding residents signing a petition, it would still fail if their total parcels don’t equal 20 percent of the surrounding land.
Both council members previously not supporting the project, which included Nicola DiLeva and Matthew Martin, continued to vote against the resolutions securing the zone change.
There was contention around the vote by some residents, because the resolution reappeared after Del Gallo brought it back up for a vote. A public hearing was held previously, but it was before Democrat Councilman Wayne Calder was elected to the board filling the vacancy created by Republican Gerard Parisi leaving.
Residents questioned previously if the board had waited for Parisi to leave before revisiting the issue to secure a vote, but Del Gallo had stated this wasn’t the reasoning for now holding the vote.
DeLorenzo would still have to go before the town Planning Commission to approve any plans for the apartment project. All R-3 Multi-Family Residential zones need to be approved by a zone change on a project to project basis since the zoning is only applied within the town once a project is proposed by a landowner.“
