ELR Citation: ELR 20132
No(s). 99 (N.Y. Jul 5, 2006)

A court upholds the dismissal of residents' state- and local-law claims challenging the rezoning of a large area of land for retail development. The rezoning does not require a three-fourths majority vote of the town board because the residents' protest petition that sought to require a supermajority vote was not signed, as local law requires, by the owners of 20% of the land within 100 feet of the land included in the rezoning area. And while the residents' claims under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) are timely brought because the statute of limitations ran from the adoption of the rezoning, not from the earlier completion of the SEQRA process, the town complies with SEQRA. The town took a "hard look" at the traffic problems that could be anticipated from its proposed rezoning, and its explanations of its proposed courses of action were well within a rule of reason.