Waiving $8000 in escrow charges and appointing Tracy Kellogg as his replacement amounted to a favor for a political ally, Hurley Planning Board chair Peter McKnight has charged. The act was a political coup, McKnight complained at the town board’s January 7 reorganizational meeting.
The charges were waived for a subdivision and lot-line adjustment submitted by Marie Shultis, wife of highway superintendent Mike Shultis.
The town board on December 10 found the planning board had failed to remit monthly summaries of charges, leading to escalating fees incurred by the services of legal counsel. It waived the fees and accepted the initial $500 deposit as full payment.
McKnight said the fees reached that amount due to the failure of the town clerk’s office then headed by Kellogg to turn over documents to the planning board. McKnight also objected to the town board’s appointment of Kellogg to a seat on the planning board and then to its chair — replacing him.
“On December 30, the town board then illegally voted to appoint Tracy Kellogg to the planning board. Legally, that vote needed to take place after my term expired on midnight December 31,” McKnight said. “The town board tonight plans to make her chair of planning board, which is ironic, since it was her office which caused the errors that resulted in the town court’s decision to forgive around $8000 in escrow charges, a nice bonus for the for a political ally of many of them.”
McKnight responded to the recent numerous complaints about the planning board.
“Every time one of those complaints was brought to my attention over the past year, I was able to give the supervisor and our town board members a detailed accounting of why the person was unhappy. Most of the time it was because the town board itself had failed to correct or modify town laws it could or should have, and the planning board has no legal authority to ignore those laws,” McKnight said. “Does the town board expect the chair to ignore the law when the applicants are unhappy, or will they give her leeway because she is a political ally? Shame on those who orchestrated this political coup and the falsehoods they told to rationalize it, and shame on those who failed to do their due diligence and went along with this disaster. Mark my words, our town will suffer as a result.”
Kellogg, whose town clerk term expired in December, has said the blame rests solely with the planning board.
At the January 7 meeting of the town board, town supervisor Michael Boms detailed another case of aggrieved planning-board applicant. The town board set a public hearing to resolve complaints from Katie Greaves and Alex Perfect, who were charged $2300 in fees for a certificate of appropriateness for a solar-panel installation.
“And they came in Friday with another bill for $1200,” Boms said.
Town attorney Matt Jankowski said there was no fee for “certificates of appropriateness” under local law.
The purpose of the hearing, set for January 28, is to contest the escrow fees and determine what is reasonable and necessary.
“Our statute requires that the planning board send regular bills as they are building from the escrow, whereas it seems with some of these applications they will go upwards of six, seven months and then send a bill for eight, nine thousand dollars,” Jankowski said.
Boms and the town board have fielded at least a dozen complaints about prolonged processes and exorbitant fees by the planning board. The zoning appeals board (ZBA) has complained that much of its time has been taken up dealing with mistakes made by the planning board.
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