A state Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by East Hills environmental activist Richard Brummel earlier this year against the Village of East Hills in which he challenged eight decisions of the village’s Architectural Review Board.
Brummel, 52, claimed the Architectural Review Board’s decisions were “arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion,” according to court documents obtained by Blank Slate Media, and violated village laws pertaining to tree preservation and protection as well as those concerning the Architectural Review Board’s review requirements.
Judge Anthony L. Parga ruled on May 22 that Brummel did not have the authority to bring the lawsuits since he did not own any of the properties whose decisions he was appealing, he never made an application to the Architectural Review Board concerning the properties involved in the suit and failed to get the owners of the properties to join his suit,
Brummel said in a press release that he is in the process of consulting with legal experts on whether he should appeal.
“The judge issued a pretty detailed decision, but it seemed to ignore recent developments in the law and seemed to take an overly conservative view of the issues and the legal arguments presented,” Brummel said.
Brummel, who in the last few months also unsuccessfully petitioned the Village of Mineola to protect what he claimed was a 125-year-old red oak tree in the back yard of a house at 208 Roslyn Road, has regularly challenged East Hills housing development plans that involved the removal of trees.
“Citizens need to be able to fight bad environmental policy such as is being followed in East Hills, where no beautiful tree is safe and no neighborhood is sacred, despite laws explicitly claiming to protect them,” Brummel said in the release.
East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz, who has borne the brunt of Brummel’s ire in the past, said the village never really took the lawsuit that seriously.
“From the outset we believed that the litigation lacked merit,” Koblenz said in the statement.
But Koblenz, who is a partner in the law firm Mound Cotton Wollan and Greengrass, which deals with litigation and general corporate law, said he was concerned that Brummel’s lawsuit had reached the state Supreme Court
He said a precedent may have been set allowing residents to arbitrarily appeal decisions made by the architectural review board, which he said is comprised of volunteer residents to make decisions on issues pertaining to village aesthetics and tree removal.
This would mean, theoretically, that every resident in East Hills could raise different grounds and challenge every decision rendered by the ARB concerning someone’s else [sic] home and application,” Koblenz said in the statement. “That result would tie the administrative system in knots.”
Brummel said despite the lawsuit’s outcome, he will not be deterred from continuing his work fighting what he sees as over-development in Long Island.
“I see and read about this pattern of suburban environmental degradation everywhere in this area, and I will keep fighting it as hard as I can,” Brummel said. “My next goal is to rally Long Island residents to join together against over-development and destructive re-building.”
