In a declaratory judgement where the plaintiffs sought to annul a Local Law enacted in 2007 to eliminate the planning board’s discretion to approve a longer street in subidivisions having cul-de-sacs, the Appellate Court disagreed with the plaintiff’s contention that the Town was required to provide the County Planning Division with thirty days to review the proposed amendment before adoption. The Court stated that General Municipal Law 239-m simply requires the Town to refer the proposed amendment prior to taking “final action”, and that the applicable county planning agency is required to report its recommendations to the municipality within 30 days of receipt of the referral, and where it fails to do so, the referring agency may take final action without the report. The county may certainly take less than thirty days to report back to the Town. Since the county planning division reported its approval to the Town before the Town took final action in adopting the local law, there was no violation of the referral statute.
Lasky v. Town Board of Town of Amherst, 2008 WL 5413324 (N.Y.A.D. 4 Dept. 12/31/2008).
The opinion can be accessed at: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/ad4/Court/Decisions/2008/12-31-08/PDF/1332.pdf
