KNOX — Kristen Reynders, owner of Hitmans Roadside Service on Route 146, is scheduled to appear in town court on Nov. 17, facing a jury trial amid the town’s charge that her business has run afoul of zoning regulations.

The trial date was first scheduled for July but initially postponed because the building inspector, Robert Delaney, was unavailable.

Ticketed in January for operating a business in a residential zone, Reynders has parked her tow trucks at her home in Knox for several years and applied in 2013 for a special-use permit to operate a state inspection garage. She bought her property on Township Road in Knox in 2009. That same year, the zoning administrator in Altamont wrote letters asking her to stop parking her flatbed truck in her family members’ suburban driveway in the village.

The town’s attorney, John Dorfman, included in his brief a copy of an invoice from Hitmans to a customer for replacing a damaged stud, reinstalling lug nuts and wheels, and applying lubricant in 2013. He included it as an example of work at Reynders’s Knox property that would make its use a public garage, which is allowed under the zoning law only where commercial uses are designated.

An outcry from residents and neighbors followed the charges. Many asked the town board to allow the business and change the zoning law. The board has since amended the law to allow commercial uses in an area in the town’s hamlet along Route 156. It voted to delay development of a similar zone that included Hitmans until after the town’s 20-year-old comprehensive plan is revised.

In her brief with the town court, Reynders’s attorney, Nicole Strippoli, of Young, Fenton, Kelsey & Brown, P.C., wrote that her client would re-apply for a permit to operate her business once the comprehensive plan is complete.

Strippoli wrote that the garage on the Knox property was built and used for business before Reynders bought the land, calling it a “preexisting garage.” She wrote that Reynders does not repair vehicles at her garage and did not when Delaney ticketed her.

Despite the violated section of the law being written on the appearance ticket and accusatory document as 45, instead of the correct 44, and having the wrong date on the ticket, Knox Town Judge Jean Gagnon denied Strippoli’s request to dismiss the charge.

“Kristen’s garage is most certainly not open to the public,” Strippoli wrote, adding that Reynders only stores her trucks at the property and towing is not specifically listed in the zoning law.