WESTERLO — A Westerlo law intended to avoid lawsuits has generated one of its own. 

Former Westerlo Planning Board members Angela Carkner, Richard Kurylo, and Gerard Boone have sued the town board and the newly designated combined planning/zoning board, claiming that the abolishment of the planning board, passed last month with a simple 3-to-2 majority of the town board, required a supermajority to approve.

The suit, filed on July 29, claims that the town board did not modify the planning board law to meet the recommendations of the Albany County Planning Board, which had approved the local law only under the conditions that notice be sent to adjacent municipalities and that subdivision reviews be handled by the town board, per New York State Law.

The attorney representing the former planning board members, Andrew Brick, told The Enterprise this week that state law is “crystal clear” that a supermajority from any referring body is required to override the county planning board’s recommendations on an action which, unlike the advisories also included in the county board’s opinion, are a condition for full approval. 

“The town notified the adjacent municipalities,” Brick said, “but they never took any action to account for modification number one [for subdivision reviews] and to delete the language related to subdivision authority going to the planning board.”

The local law makes a wholesale transfer of all planning board functions to the combined planning/zoning board, stating that the board “shall have all the powers and duties provided to it under the Town Law of the State of New York, the Westerlo Zoning Law, the Subdivision Regulations of the Town of Westerlo, prior Resolutions, ordinances and local laws of the Town of Westerlo and any other laws, rules or regulations, either state or local, and ordinarily exercised by a Planning Board and/or Zoning Board of Appeals,” going on to list specific functions, including the “power to approve existing unauthorized subdivisions.” 

The Westerlo law also includes standard language stating that any part of the law determined by a judge to be “invalid or unconstitutional” will not invalidate the remaining portion of the law.  

Supervisor Matthew Kryzak declined to comment, citing pending litigation. 

The lawsuit asks the New York State Supreme Court — the lowest rung in the state’s three-tiered system — to declare the abolishment law invalid and therefore annulled, reinstate the planning board as it was, and to make up for any compensation lost by the planning board members as a result of the enactment.

Brick was formerly the attorney for the planning/zoning board in Coeymans, where Westerlo town attorney George McHugh was formerly supervisor. McHugh has been central to the planning board issue in Westerlo, and the two have a combative history, with McHugh having allegedly asked Brick to resign from his attorney post in Coeymans, to the town board’s bemusement, according to an article in the Upstater. 

Brick is also a former member of the Westerlo Planning Board, having been on it when it was reconstituted in 2007, fifteen years after the town board at that time had abolished it. He said he moved off the Hill in 2010, but still owns property in the town and intends to move back at some point.

“I don’t know Angela Carkner personally, but I know Gerry Boone and Rich Kurylo …,” Brick told The Enterprise this week. “Gerry and Rich have given so much to the town of Westerlo. They care about the town. They love the town. They dedicated themselves to the town for years. They should be given a proclamation and a medal, and instead [the town] kicked their butts out the door without even so much as a thank-you.

“It isn’t right,” he said. “It isn’t how you treat your neighbors.”