| October 28: | The Zoning Board of Appeals gave Mr. Sullivan everything he asked for. They said the Planning Board could simply waive the entire section of law requiring special protections for our development because it is next to the Designed Shopping zone. They then allowed this huge strip mall to be built on this tiny lot. They claimed it would not be detrimental to our neighborhood but Mr. Fink, the ZBA's attorney said "the people on Route 94 are now probably sorry they built there." We announced we would sue the ZBA, as we were forced to do several years ago when Dr. Wiley wanted to build on this lot. |
| September 23: | The Zoning Board of Appeals receieved an ammended application from Mr. Sullivan, asking that all the legal restrictions in the zoning law simply be waived. Several of the neighbors voiced forceful objections to this patently illegal move. |
| September 12: | Nothing concerning our zoning problem was discussed at the Town Board meeting. Several members of the community submitted applications for the Town's Board of Ethics, which is currently unable to function because it has only one member. |
| August 26: | The ZBA met but postponed discussion of this case until
their next meeting because they "thought" the applicant
was amending his variance request.
We expect this is because of all the legal objections
we raised, but no amendments can possibly make this
variance request legally or morally acceptable.
|
| August 15: | The Town Board placed us on their agenda to "discuss" our
request to rezone this property back to residential.
Because we knew this was not a public hearing we were
not prepared to speak, had only a few people at the
meeting, and did not have our attorney with us.
We still forcefully stated our case that the
property should never have been rezoned to commercial.
We expected the Town Board to schedule a public hearing on our petition, as the law requires, but they refused to do so. Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton said that he thought the zoning was fine as it is and that the Board did not have to act on our petition or tell us why not. He asked the other members of the Board if they wanted to comment on our petition, but not one of them said a word. This is a clearly illegal action by the Town Board. |
| July 22: | The Zoning Board of Appeals declined to wait until the Town Board considers our petition to rezone this property. We asked them to send the variance request back to the Planning Board because it is incorrect. There are special areas in the zoning law that pertain only to our section of town, and these have much stricter requirements than the ones the developer had been using. The ZBA asked us to point out these areas in the law and our attorney followed up with an exhaustive letter. |
| July 18: | We delivered our petition to the Warwick Town Board at their regular meeting and paid a $400 filing fee. Michael Sweeton, the Town Supervisor, refused to allow us to speak about the petition or the Strip Mall. He said our petition would be on the agenda of the next Town Board meeting and we should speak about it then. The acting Town Attorney, John Bolenbach, said the Town Board didn't have to consider our petition if it didn't want to. |
| July 15: | We have received the finished copy of our petition to the Warwick Town Board asking them to zone this property back to residential. We will be contacting everyone who wanted to sign the petition for your signature. |
| July 12: | We are working with noted Goshen attorney Stephen Hunter to prepare the petition to the Warwick Town Board. |
| June 28: | We are preparing a petition to the Warwick Town Board to get the lot zoned back to residential, which would make it impossible to build the strip mall there. We need your help! Please see the How you can help page for more information. |
| June 26: | An article appeared in the "Times Herald Record" detailing our attempts to keep this area of Route 94 green. |
| June 25: | An article appeared in the "Warwick Dispatch" discribing the events of the June 24 Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. |
| June 24: | Quite a few of our neighbors attended the second meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals about this strip mall. We delivered a letter signed by 64 neighbors and petitions with dozens of names from other Town residents objecting to the variance which would allow it to be built. The Board decided that there were enough questions about the change in zoning that they would hold off a decision for another month to give us a chance to petition the Town Board to change the zoning back to residential. |