At 9:50 am, Bill Weber called Deb Munitz just ten minutes before the Town Board meeting of September 17, 2016 asking if she knew that Patrick Farm was on the agenda. No, nobody knew. Deb Munitz ran over and caught Michael Klein asking why there was no notice and the answer was straightforward, there was no public hearing planned so that board did not have to alert the public.

After years of fighting and extensive litigation regarding the plans ROSA had forced the developer to have to go and get a Jurisdictional Determination from ACOE and this finally was obtained in December of 2015 so new plans were drawn up and submitted. ROSA asked for the SEQRA review be updated due to the significant changes and repeated this requested throughout the year. The Town Board’s response was to update the SEQRA Findings without public review or a public hearing and to schedule the meeting with no notice.

ROSA filed an Article 78 Lawsuit last fall: 2015-12-23-tor-findings-addendum-amended-petition and had to hire wetland expert Stephen Gross of Hudson Highlands and hydrogeologist expert Paul Rubin of Hydroquest to support our legal case.

The Town Board addressed our claims regarding an endangered species by passing an additional Findings Amendment in December of 2015 and these updated Findings were adopted by the Ramapo Planning Board on January 26, 2016.

At the public hearing on January 26th we submitted our legal papers regarding the lawsuit to the Planning Board so that they could read our objections and our legal expert opinions before voting to adopt the new findings but the completely fill box of materials submitted that night went unread and the vote was held that same night.

The lawsuit for this issue has still not been reviewed by Judge Walsh and it has been calendared with the subsequent lawsuit.