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The former vice-chairman of the Riverhead Republican party is suing Riverhead Town over a land use flap involving town employees, alleging the town improperly issued building and zoning letters to longtime town sanitation superintendent John Reeve, and looked the other way as he expanded allegedly illegal uses on his creek-front property in Aquebogue, including a commercial shellfishing operation run by two town police officers.
William F. Andes, Jr. of Aquebogue, filed the suit last week, alleging "the Town of Riverhead and its building department sat idly by and did nothing to enforce the town code and zoning ordinance" while Reeve and his wife Sandy, owners of JS Reeve Summer Cottages in Aquebogue, "were changing the use of [their] property to a marina, installing new structures to accommodate that new use, and while they were reinstating another commercial use [a commercial oyster operation] that had been discontinued."
Marina and commercial fishing facilities are prohibited under the property's current residential zoning.
Andes is joined in the suit by his wife, Eva, and their neighbors Martin and Dale Silver. Their petition asks the court to overturn a June 24 ruling by the Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals that upheld a determination by building department administrator Leroy Barnes that Reeve's docks, bulkheading, marina and commercial oyster operation pre-existed the town's current zoning on the property.
The papers paint a picture of favoritism by the town for one of its longtime employees. Barnes denies favoritism was at play.
"The record speaks for itself," Barnes said in an interview today. "It's very clear and fully supports my determination," he said. He declined further comment because of the pending litigation.
The petitioners allege that the building department accepted applications from the Reeves that were incomplete— missing surveys, supporting affidavits and, in some cases, even permit fees.
They complain that Barnes issued the Nov. 2009 letter granting the Reeves relief they hadn't even requested, by including the marina and oyster operation uses as pre-existing uses. The application then before the building department sought a pre-existing use determination for docks and bulkheading only, the petition states. In fact, according to the petition, an attorney for the Reeves, former town supervisor Robert Kozakiewicz, wrote a letter to the Town Board in July 2009 stating that no marina existed on the premises.
The papers allege that Barnes asked a member of his staff, building inspector Richard Gadzinski, to amend a Dec. 2008 letter of pre-existing use, in order to help the Reeves' with a pending Town Board special permit application to build new docks. At an April 7, 2009 public hearing on their special permit application, then-supervisor Phil Cardinale — who as a private attorney in 1994 had represented the seller of the property to the Reeves — asked the Reeves to submit proof of a pre-existing, nonconforming marina use. On April 23, 2009 Gadzinski, at Barnes' request, amended the Dec. 2008 pre-existing use letter to include docks and bulkheading, the petition states, whereas the December 2008 letter only covered the house, barn and cottages on the property.
Andes appealed the April 23, 2009 letter to the ZBA and won. After a hearing at which Gadzinski testified to Barnes' intervention in the Reeves matter, the ZBA, on Oct. 8, 2009, annulled the April letter, ruling that the docks and bulkheading structures had been "completely replaced" and could not be considered "pre-existing." The ZBA admonished the building department to be more specific about the precise nature of pre-existing uses in such letters.
On Nov. 24, 2009, Barnes issued the letter in controversy, specifying as pre-existing the docks, bulkheading, a marina and commercial oyster operation.
Andes and Silver appealed to the ZBA on Jan. 21, 2010, complaining that town records do not support a finding that the marina and commercial oyster business uses on the site were pre-existing.
On June 24, after several adjournments and a fire that destroyed many of the building department's records, including the Reeve file, the ZBA "sustained in its entirety" the Nov. 29, 2009 letter, ruling "the documents relied upon by the building inspector in making his determination reasonably and rationally support his findings and conclusions."
David Lessard said he and his brother bought 40-acres of creek bottom from the prior owner of the Reeve's property, Ben White, a commercial fisherman who harvested shellfish from the creek since the 1930s. White's family had a land grant from the state dating back to 1884, Lessard said. The allegations that the the commercial fishing use had been abandoned is false, Lessard said. White fished there every year of his life, Lessard said, and he and his brother have been fishing there ever since.
Andes and Silver filed the Article 78 petition July 23, asking the court to reverse the June 24 ZBA decision. Scott DeSimone, counsel to the ZBA said Wednesday he had not yet seen the papers and could not comment.
The Reeves special permit application is still pending before the Town Board. They are seeking permission to replace three existing docks with a 238-foot-long floating dock with 7 finger piers, resulting in 14 boat slips. They did not return a phone call seeking comment for this article.
The litigation is on the agenda for discussion by the Town Board in executive session at today's work session.