The French-American School of New York has followed through on a promise to sue the city of White Plains, filing last week in New York State Supreme Court.
The 87-page lawsuit against the city and its mayor, Democrat Thomas M. Roach, filed by Michael D. Zarin and Daniel M. Richmond of the firm Zarin & Steinmetz on behalf of the school, comes about a month after the city”™s Common Council did not vote to approve closing part of a road leading to the school”™s property by the five-member supermajority needed to pass the measure at an Aug. 5 special meeting.
In its suit, the school asked the state Supreme Court to throw out the council”™s vote and approve the school”™s site plan and special permit application, which would allow the school to be built near the Gedney Farms neighborhood in a single-family residential zoning district and on the site of the former Ridgeway Country Club.
The school is also suing for court costs.
The city has not yet hired a law firm, but authorization to fund outside counsel was approved by the Common Council Sept. 8, according to Karen M. Pasquale, senior adviser to the mayor.
The road in question, Hathaway Lane, leads to the school”™s 130-acre property that the French-American School purchased in 2011 with an eye toward consolidating its three existing campuses into one.
The White Plains Common Council voted 4-3 in favor of closing the requested part of Hathaway Lane with council members John M. Martin, John Kirkpatrick, Beth N. Smayda and Roach representing the four favorable votes. Martin and Kirkpatrick have lived in the Gedney neighborhood area, according to the lawsuit.
The dissenting council members cited among other things, traffic and emergency response safety problems as the reason for their votes.
“The increased fire response time noted by the White Plains Department of Public Safety is not reasonable to Gedney residents,” Council Member Nadine Hunt-Robinson said during comments before vote against the measure, adding that “seconds matter” during an emergency.
Addressing that concern in its suit, school officials said the theoretical increase in emergency response time with the requested portion of Hathaway Lane closed is five seconds, which was deemed insignificant by David Chong, the city commissioner of public safety, in a 2014 memo to the council.
The school called the council”™s Aug. 5 vote an “illegal, irrational, baseless and arbitrary denial” in its petition, citing the inconsistent voting record of the council.
The suit points out the council voted 6-1 in December 2013 to adopt the school”™s findings statement in accordance with the State Environmental Quality Review Act for the site with respect to the Hathaway Lane partial closure and public safety.
The single dissenting vote on the environmental findings statement was Milagros Lecuona, who also voted against closing the requested section of Hathaway Lane in August.
The two other council members who voted against closing part of Hathaway were Hunt-Robinson, who was not on the Common Council at the time of the 2013 vote, and Dennis E. Krolian who voted in favor of the 2013 environmental findings statement.
“The court cannot allow the Common Council to subject an educational use, like FASNY”™s School, to a Catch-22 situation, wherein, on one hand, the Council requires by a 6-1 vote a mitigation measure ”” the partial discontinuance of Hathaway Lane ”” yet, on the other, rejects the proposal based on compliance with this mitigation measure,” the school”™s lawsuit said.
Zarin & Steinmetz, a firm that specializes in zoning, land use and environmental law, did not immediately respond to additional comment. But, in a prepared statement, it said:
“We are optimistic the court will recognize the council”™s extensive administrative record, which was compiled over four years of review establishing the merit of [the school”™s] application, and affirm the majority vote by the council in favor of the school.”
Because the Hathaway Lane proposal did not garner the required supermajority, the school”™s special permit application for site plan approval was tabled by the council.
Roach”™s office said it could not comment on pending litigation, but reiterated the mayor”™s closing comments during last month”™s special meeting indicating he would “vigorously and zealously defend the interests of this city” should it be sued.
The issue for the school”™s campus consolidation has hovered over White Plains since the school proposed a $60 million plan to include five school buildings and athletic fields on roughly 40 acres and construct a 78-acre public space of trails and bike paths in spring 2011.
The French-American School currently rents three facilities for its kindergarten-through-high school students in the villages of Larchmont, Scarsdale and Mamaroneck.
Some of the plan”™s biggest critics are residents and business owners affiliated with the Gedney Association, which disagrees with the school”™s proposal for reasons including emergency response times and overall safety.
John Sheehan, president of the Gedney Association, safety, is confident the courts will uphold the Aug. 5 decision council decision.
“We would be shocked if the court didn”™t find that the city acted in its decision in a correct fashion,” he said. “There was nothing done here that we saw was arbitrary in any shape or manner.”
There is no way this behemoth of a project would fit into what is considered a quaint and bucolic neighborhood, one of White Plains’ most desirable areas. When the White Plains Board of Education came out with strong objections based on safety issues related to the increased traffic, it should have been “Game Over” for FASNY right then and there. The safety and welfare of our public school children are what the mayor and council are entrusted with, not accommodating outside interests of the privileged few.