Group sues to protect farmland



RENSSELAERVILLE — Rensselaerville Farmland Protection, a small group of residents, has sued the town over its new zoning ordinance.
"We tried to raise questions and get the town to talk to us — to be able to convince them to do something in addition to the law that they passed," said Vernon Husek, who leads the farmland protection group. "It became pretty clear they were not going to do that."

Husek has been an outspoken proponent of large-acre zoning in the town’s agricultural district; the town board adopted five-acre zoning.

On Jan. 19, one month after the town board held a public hearing and voted unanimously to adopt new zoning laws, the group filed an Article 78 petition — which allows citizens to challenge their governments — with the state’s Supreme Court.

State law requires a suit to be filed within 30 days of the enactment of a law. The Supreme Court is the lowest level court in the state’s three-tiered system.
"I have been authorized, together, with the deputy town attorney [Jon Kosich], to represent the town and submit papers in opposition to the Article 78," Rensselaerville’s town attorney, Joseph Catalano, said this week. Catalano and Kosich did not represent the town when the zoning law was adopted. Both were appointed in January by the Democrats, who now hold a majority on the town board; they replaced the Albany law firm of Tabner, Ryan, and Keniry, which the Republicans had supported.
"We haven’t fully finalized our papers yet. The date for filing and serving a response is next Friday," said Catalano.

Rensselaerville Farmland Protection is starting a membership drive for its organization, and will hold a meeting on March 8 to sign up new members, said Husek.

The group says the Rensselaerville Town Board violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by failing to state in a notice of a December public hearing on the zoning law that a special meeting would also be held. Municipalities are required to publish notices of public hearings in their official newspaper.

In December, after the Rensselaerville Town Board held a public hearing on new zoning laws, it unanimously adopted the law just minutes after it had closed the hearing. It was the second public hearing on new zoning laws during a 20-month process.

Good cause exists, RFP says in its suit, to invalidate the actions taken by the town board at the Dec. 19 special meeting, including the enactment and the adoption of the town’s zoning ordinance.
"The allegation is correct in that, apparently, the public hearing was publicly noticed and published but not the special meeting that followed immediately thereafter," said Catalano. "Again, we’re looking through our records as we speak"That doesn’t necessarily invalidate the actions at the meeting," he said.

Zoning differs from master plan"

Rensselaerville Farmland Protection formed after the town adopted its comprehensive plan in March of last year. Members of the group have questioned a five-acre zoning requirement in the agricultural district, as outlined in the new zoning law, as well as the ability of a five-acre minimum to protect farmland and the town’s prime soils.
"We hope for a zoning law that will do a better job of protecting agricultural land in the town of Rensselaerville from residential development, primarily," said Husek. "We have identified other weaknesses, but that’s our core issue."

Last fall, as the planning process came to a close, the town sent a survey to all residents, who were to choose between one dwelling per five acres in the agricultural district and one dwelling per 20 acres. Nearly two-thirds of about 1,000 residents voted for five acres, the same zoning requirement that had previously been in place. The committee that was then drafting new zoning laws had voted unanimously for the same.

Husek chaired the committee that created the town’s comprehensive plan. He resigned just after the town board unanimously adopted the plan, which calls for a low-density requirement — one house per 20 acres — in the agricultural district. Husek had disagreed with the majority of the committee, which voted for a higher-density requirement in the district than had been recommended by experts.

In its suit, RFP points out the inconsistency between the zoning requirement in the town’s comprehensive plan and the requirement in the zoning ordinance. The town’s master plan recommends 20-acre zoning in the agricultural district; the town’s new zoning ordinance allows a five-acre minimum.
"The town board, by adopting the zoning law, felt that the zoning law was ‘in accordance with the comprehensive plan,’" said Catalano. "That’s the legal test. That’s what the statute requires — that the zoning law be ‘in accordance with the comprehensive plan.’ We feel that it is," he said. "You could cherry-pick language from large documents like these and create inconsistencies that way, but we don’t feel, at this point, that there’s any inconsistency. This will all be put into our papers and we’ll see what the judge says."

In December, the town board unanimously adopted a negative declaration for the zoning laws — meaning the laws would not result in any adverse environmental impacts.
RFP contends high-density residential and commercial development in the town’s hamlets "may include the potential for at least one significant adverse environmental impact."

The group says the town board should have issued a positive declaration and prepared an environmental impact statement.
Catalano said, "One of the things that the Article 78 doesn’t really point out is that any significant commercial or residential development within the hamlet area would be subject to its own [State Environmental Quality Review Act] process, whereby any potential impacts of a specific project that is proposed would have to be addressed."

A SEQRA review is an analysis of a proposed project and its potential impacts to the environment. Reviews are mandated by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
"The zoning law as well as the comp plan doesn’t provide any particular uses or developments that are allowed without any further review," Catalano said. "So just saying in the zoning law that these uses are allowed by special [use] permit or site-plan review — that doesn’t, in itself, create any environmental impacts."