Croton's Dubious and Costly Strategy of Delay

OP ED

In a time of intractable recession, it is not unreasonable for citizens of a small village to expect that its Village Board will wisely spend the monies it extracts so effortlessly from them as taxes. Not so in Croton, where board members attempted to peddle the fiction that they have been following the wisest course in handling a lawsuit challenging the 2009 modifications to the Zoning Law.

Instead of responding to the lawsuit ably researched and drawn up with surgical precision by attorney Pat Moran, Croton attempted an end run around it by asking the Court to declare the lawsuit’s 13 claims to have been mooted by the Village’s intention to eventually pass a replacement law. To drum up support for this dubious strategy, board members loudly proclaimed their course of action as “a cheaper way to save taxpayers’ money.”

At the Village Board meeting on August 9th, Ms. Roseann Schuyler offered a comment and a simple solution of King Solomonic proportions. If the board indeed had wanted to save taxpayers’ money, all it had to do was merely to admit to even one of the mistakes alleged by the lawsuit, and repeal the law. Following the course suggested by Ms. Schuyler would have been the forthright and businesslike solution, but even displaying that scrap of integrity now may be expecting too much of the present board.

On August 10, 2010, Judge Albert Lorenzo of the State Supreme Court issued an interim decision that was absolute carnage for Croton’s strategy. It denied the Village’s attempt to have all 13 claims dismissed, and ordered Croton to respond to the Article 78 action within 30 days. Moreover, the Court issued an injunction barring implementation of any new Harmon replacement law. Croton’s vaunted legal maneuver and the case itself were left in shambles. The inevitable question becomes, “Are we paying too much for what we get?”

As Judge Lorenzo’s decision revealed, the Village’s delaying tactics were too clever by half, and availed it nothing. Originally directed to respond by May 26, the Village still must respond to the Article 78 action—only now it has a rapidly dwindling 20 days to scramble and do it. One earnestly hopes that none of this accelerated effort will be billed as overtime.

It is patently obvious that Croton has been litigiously engaged in “a waste of judicial and municipal resources”--to use a term of art mentioned by Judge Lorenzo--all because someone is unwilling to own up to the fact that errors were made. The future of Croton is being deliberated and decided by cowardly types of the least excusable sort--persons who have nothing to fear and no reason for dissembling.

Those of every political stripe who oppose the misguided Harmon zoning changes have done nothing to disgrace Croton by pointing out the many errors that were committed. Yet, by its disastrous legal maneuvering and by opposing its own citizens so patronizingly, the Village Board has managed to do everything possible to disgrace themselves.