DELIVERED BY HAND / POST MAIL (6 pages)
Village of Chestnut Ridge
277 Old Nyack Turnpike
Chestnut Ridge, NY 10977
ATTN: Rosario Presti, Jr., Mayor and Board of Trustees, C/O Village Clerk

FOR THE RECORD – COMMENTS TO PROPOSED ZONING AMENDMENTS FOR
PLACES OF WORSHIP
November ____, 2018
Dear Mayor Presti and members of the Board of Trustees:
I, ________________________________, residing at _______________________________
in the Village of Chestnut Ridge, New York, hereby express my comments to the public
record and for your consideration with regard to the “Proposed Zoning Text Amendments
for Places of Worship” dated February 9, 2017 (henceforth referred to as the “Proposed
Law”)
I am also guided by the subsequent draft revisions of that Proposed Law entitled
“Amendments to Zoning Law; Public Assembly Uses” dated August 29, 2018 (henceforth
referred to as the “Draft Revisions”).
I am opposed to this Proposed Law in its entirety and especially to the process which
produced it, and stand with many other residents in calling for the village to instead do a
proper Comprehensive Plan while imposing a suitable building moratorium. I’ll express
my comments further in that regard at the end of this letter.
The Board, however, seems intent on moving steadily forward with the Proposed Law
despite the strong and significant objections demonstrated by many hundreds of
residents and outside authorities at the June and July public hearings. It is important,
therefore, that pending any subsequent challenges to your course of action, the public
record on the Proposed Law be properly balanced with specific critical input, especially
when no transcripts of all spoken remarks from the two hearings are yet in the record
for your consideration (at least as of September 7, 2018).
So, I give below my comments on specific aspects and provisions of the Proposed Law.

I.

Correct the Village’s Code Enforcement and Building Inspection Problems
BEFORE Adopting the Proposed Law in any Form
The Proposed Law will be meaningless if the village continues to conduct erroneous
building inspections and fails to address rampant violations because of inadequate
code enforcement − longstanding problems which residents have been repeatedly
presenting in earnest to the Board for some time. Moreover, the Proposed Law will
certainly bring about the need for more resources in this area. Therefore, I ask
emphatically: DO NOT ADOPT the Proposed Law in any form UNTIL the following
conditions are achieved:
•

The village engineer must review ALL permits and building plans in ALL
OPEN and FUTURE ACTIVE BUILDING FILES for content and errors. This
provides crucial and necessary assistance to the Building Inspector, analogous
to the CDRC’s review of plans before submission to the Planning Board.
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 •

Hire a FULL-TIME DEPUTY BUILDING INSPECTOR.

•

Formally codify a protocol for REQUIRED JOINT REVIEW AND
DOCUMENTED CO-APPROVAL by the Deputy Building Inspector of ALL
permit applications and submitted plans.

•

Hire a FULL-TIME CODE ENFORCER. With the recent hiring of a new parttime enforcer, and only after he has completed training, we are still just back
to where things were before the previous experienced and knowledgeable
code enforcer resigned.

II. Parking Must be More Restricted within Residential Neighborhoods
Excessive and frequent parking and the resulting street congestion, noise, traffic and
pedestrian hazard, especially at night and including children, is the single most
disruptive problem and irritant posed by having regular and frequent gatherings in
our neighborhoods. It also spoils the neighborhood character. While I credit the
Board’s attempt to address this serious issue with the Draft Revisions, your efforts
must go further. Specifically:
•

ALL PARKING for any formal place of gathering/worship MUST BE ONSITE. The primary reason for allowing such places in the neighborhoods is the
need by worshipers of some religions to be in walking distance of their place
of worship. That means driving should not be needed, except during or in
anticipation of bad weather, individual medical situations and other very
exceptional conditions. When local residents attending these gathering places
really need to drive, the group should be required to employ their own
means of accommodation, such as carpooling, to keep the number of parked
vehicles on-site to within the required allowance.

•

Off-site parking unacceptably SPREADS the IMPACT of ACTIVITY beyond
the property boundary of the gathering place. The larger number of cars,
persons congregating near the cars, increased street congestion, noise and
traffic all make off-site parking unacceptable and unfair to other residents of
the neighborhood. The notion of allowing parking in participating neighboring
driveways up to 1500 feet away (over 4 football field lengths) goes too far;
that will encourage activity to spread at times onto those other properties in
addition to the street, and may enable participating neighbors to take
property tax exemptions for that usage. A large but appropriately screened
parking lot on one residential property, while not desirable, is still
preferable to expanding the activity footprint over a larger area with offsite parking.

•

Off-site parking will encourage attendance from outside the neighborhood
and abuse by neighborhood residents for convenience. Allowing off-site
parking of any kind – on-street or on neighboring properties – will result in
attendance by people from outside the neighborhood which runs counter to
the scope and purpose of a residential location. In addition, during weekday
gatherings and other times, many attendees will exploit the off-site parking
for convenience on their way to/from work or elsewhere. Residents have seen
both these problems illustrated regularly at existing informal places of
worship.

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 III. No Special Accessory Facilities and Functions Should be Allowed at all in
Neighborhoods
I credit the Board’s effort, in the Draft Revisions, to further restrict special accessory
facilities and functions for both residential and neighborhood places of worship.
Nevertheless, these changes would still allow for improper and problematic
situations that would unacceptably disrupt the relaxed residential character of
our neighborhoods. In addition, if they are allowed to any degree, however
restricted, you will always have the issue and added burden of enforcing compliance
to the allowed level of restriction. This is unrealistic given the village’s history of
inadequate and selective code enforcement.
The problem with allowing accessory usage such as administrative offices, social
halls, indoor recreation facilities, public baths, religious schools and study areas is
the additional and frequent traffic and overall busyness that becomes a regular
but inappropriate feature in the neighborhood, potentially on all days of the
week. Again, residents have already seen the unwelcome impact of this other usage
manifested regularly at existing informal places of worship, for study groups and
other purposes, outside of the regular hours of assembly.

IV. Remove the Neighborhood Place of Worship (NPW) Classification from
the Proposed Law
For the reasons cited above in section III with respect to special accessory facilities
and functions and because of the larger numbers of people, potentially hundreds,
that an NPW can accommodate, I ask that you drop the NPW classification entirely
from the Proposed Law. The Planning Board made the same recommendation in
their comments submitted to you on May 29, 2018 stating that the NPW is “too
intense a use” for residential neighborhoods. I believe that is still the case, even if
you restrict the level of special functions, because they will still negatively and
unfairly impact neighborhood quality of life and, in practice, the allowed level will
not be easily enforced.

V. Community Place of Worship (CPW) Cannot Reside Within a
Neighborhood Boundary
If the NPW can be considered too intense a use within a residential neighborhood,
then of course, a CPW within the same neighborhood is far worse. And yet, nothing
in the Proposed Law, including the Draft Revisions, would preclude this from
happening. That’s because the key discriminant for classifying a property as a CPW
is that it only has a floor area of more than 10,000 square feet.
It is entirely feasible and easily expected, given the rate of home sales and
increasing number of temporarily rented homes in the village, that 2 or more
residential properties could be combined to produce a CPW. While I can support a
change away from the current 5 acre minimum for wholly dedicated religious
institutions, the issue of location and residential impact is still the paramount
concern that has to be properly addressed.
A CPW with a social hall, indoor gymnasium/recreation facility, and/or religious
school, all inside a residential neighborhood, would radically alter the character
and quality of life all week long for other residents living there and cannot be
allowed. I ask that you come up with a different definition of CPW that would
definitively preclude its existence within the boundary of a residential
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 neighborhood. For example, a CPW could be required to have its front or main
property boundary, parking lot and pedestrian access only along a main state or
county road.

VI. Define Procedures for Compliance Inspection of Residential Gathering
Places in Between Permit Renewals
Aside from annual fire safety inspections of residential gathering places (RGP), and
compliance inspections at the time of permit renewals (which could be every 5
years), the Proposed Law does not define any other periodic inspection schedule to
ensure the gathering place remains fully compliant with the Proposed Law.
There should be an annual unscheduled inspection of all RGPs by the Building
Inspector or Code Enforcer to ensure continued compliance. That inspection
should be coupled with annual renewal of the RGP’s certificate of occupancy.
Additionally, there should be a well-defined procedure that allows for unscheduled
inspection of an RGP within a short period of time in response to a neighborhood
resident complaint about a failure of compliance.
Those are my comments on specific aspects of the Proposed Law.
Now, I will explain my strong general opposition to it; to the unfair and flawed process
through which you brought it forward; and to the unacceptable explanations given in
justification by the Mayor at the 2 public hearings and recent village board meetings.
First, with regard to the Proposed Law itself:
•

It is an inappropriate, poorly crafted, unnecessarily controversial shortcut to doing
the right thing − a Comprehensive Plan process with moratorium.

•

It is an unfair, politically motivated, and wrongly justified response to the
challenges the village is facing from a rapidly growing religious community and the
threat of RLUIPA lawsuits.

•

It may be unconstitutional by violation of the establishment clause of the First
Amendment.

•

It may likely open a can of worms in which other residents will pursue religious
gatherings on their property in order to get property tax exemptions of their own.

Second, with regard to the process: The Mayor has stated at both the public hearings
and the village board meetings that the Board is “following the same process they have
conducted in the past for all other proposed laws.” I find it troubling that the
extraordinary nature, scope and inherent social problems of the Proposed Law did not
suggest to the Board that a different process should have been conducted, especially in
the absence of any Comprehensive Plan. As a result,
•

there were never any resident workshops to inform and guide the initial
drafting, which led to unproductive anger, outrage and community discord at the
first two public hearings, and deprived the Board of the opportunity to properly
weigh opposing concerns;

•

there were never any special informational mailings issued to all residents
about the draft document or the public hearings;

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 •

a digital copy of the Proposed Law was not even available (or certainly, not
easily found) on the village web site until a couple of weeks before the first public
hearing;

•

the Proposed Law was clearly hand-tailored to serve one particular religious
community and was drafted with the input of just one religious organization, which
represented that community;

•

simply tweaking the law, as with the Draft Revisions, can make things worse:
For example, reclassifying residential places of worship as “gathering places”
enables all kinds of other use for these properties which goes beyond the original
motivation to accommodate worshipers who need to be in walking distance.

Finally, on 4 key issues related to the Proposed Law, the Mayor has repeatedly made
misleading statements, in particular at the July 24th public hearing (quoted below).
These cannot go unchallenged, because they undermine confidence in and respect for
the Board’s course of action with the Proposed Law:
•

“Substantial Burden” in RLUIPA. The Mayor categorically stated that “Substantial
Burden isn’t the fact that someone has to walk to their house of worship. Substantial
Burden is the definition of what is the process to get the application shepherded
through the various boards of the community.” Except, there is no definition of
“substantial burden” anywhere in the text of RLUIPA. According to an
authoritative study of this term and survey of actual court cases: “After more than
eight years of litigation under RLUIPA, a broadly applied definition of a
substantial burden has not emerged.” Moreover, across the spectrum of rendered
interpretations, the Mayor’s particular definition is regarded as the most
extreme interpretation. [Sources: “Six Fact Patterns of Substantial Burden In
RLUIPA: Lessons for Potential Litigants” by Chaffee & Merriam in the Albany
Government Law Review, Vol. 2 (2009), pages 437-483; Mayor’s recorded video
remarks, https://youtu.be/cYlyR9bUMq4?t=1807]

•

Comprehensive Plan. The Mayor has repeatedly dismissed the call for a
Comprehensive Plan and said flatly, “To do an entire Comprehensive Plan on this
village would probably take close to 3 or 4 years.” And yet, Airmont, a village next
door, smaller in area but a little larger in population, just completed their 2nd
Comprehensive Plan in 21 months. They employ the same planning consulting firm
as we do, Nelson, Pope & Voorhis, LLC (NPV). At Airmont’s village board meeting on
September 4 2018, the NPV consultant working with them on their plan told a
Chestnut Ridge resident that it usually takes 18-24 months to do a
Comprehensive Plan, irrespective of whether a village already has a previous
plan or not. At the July 24th public hearing, Beatrice Burgis, a planning consultant
from a firm that represents close to 40 municipalities in New Jersey and others in
New York, stated “When you say it takes 3 years, 4 years – we’ve done communities
much larger than this in less than half that time.” And on the matter of public
participation, her firm routinely holds charrettes, which are “basically focus groups,
where people come together and have the opportunity BEFORE something like this
comes before the public.” [Sources: Mayor’s recorded video remarks,
https://youtu.be/ORqirjGlOjI?t=1946; Beatrice Burgis’ recorded video remarks,
https://youtu.be/6Kau9di3NvQ?t=1260]
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 •

Moratorium. For 2 years now, the Mayor has resisted calls to impose a building
moratorium and said that a moratorium would necessarily stop everything in the
village and be impractical. He said, “We cannot pull out a moratorium for 4 years.
Not allowed by law. The law will not permit that.” Except, it wouldn’t have to be for
4 years, just for the 18-24 months normally required to do a Comprehensive Plan.
And a moratorium can be designed to be a general ban OR specific to particular
uses, plus the village can also do “stopgap zoning” to prevent a race by property
owners to get new construction in place before the law’s adoption. This is all
specified clearly in the 2010 document “Land Use Moratoria” published by the New
York State Division of Local Government Service. Moreover, the village has done a
limited scope moratorium in the past, for cell towers, as Trustee Cohen cited in the
August village board meeting. [Source: Mayor’s recorded video remarks,
https://youtu.be/ORqirjGlOjI?t=1978]

•

Property Tax Exemptions. A concern among many residents is the increasing
number of properties removed from the property tax rolls for religious exemptions.
A lohud.com article reported on this general state-wide problem: “New York
Religious Property Tax Breaks Soar Heavenward” (Oct. 26, 2016, lohud.com). The
Mayor has responded to this concern by just saying that “the tax-exempt statutes are
obviously set by the State of New York. The village has no control over who applies
for tax-exemption.” Also, he pointed out that “A good portion of tax-exempt
properties are not those owned by religious organizations. They are owned by nonreligious, either secular organizations…the Salvation Army is a very large property
owner that has tax exempt status.” True enough, but all beside the point, since it is
the village which sets zoning laws that control how these properties come about
and to what degree. And the village’s existing secular non-profits are fixed
while the number of religious properties is rapidly increasing. The Proposed
Law will certainly unleash many additional properties exempt on religious grounds,
and exacerbate the already unsustainable situation in the Town of Ramapo,
eventually increasing the individual tax burden for those residents without
exemptions. [Source: Mayor’s recorded video remarks,
https://youtu.be/ORqirjGlOjI?t=1853]

I conclude my remarks and hope they will carry weight with the Board as you deliberate
further.
Sincerely,
_____________________________________

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