In This Month's Issue …
Witch Hunt Charged at Hearing on Hoop Houses
Norfolk lawyer in contentious exchange with P&Z Commission
By Lloyd Garrison
More often than not, meetings of the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) involve prolonged and weighty talk of “setbacks” and “right of ways” and the arcane legalisms that define the town’s zoning regulations.
Not so at the monthly meeting on Oct. 11, when attorney Michael Sconyers, a Norfolk resident who represents Leslie Watkins, took a seat at the conference table in an irate and resolute mood. Wasting no words, he accused the commission of overseeing a “witch hunt” at a prior meeting at which Watkins’s neighbors protested her erection of two 12-foot high hoop-supported greenhouses covered in garden cloth.
P & Z had earlier approved the structures at 281 Litchfield Road as conforming to regulations for a village residential zone. But six neighbors variously contended that the structures were “ugly,” undercut property values, caused excessive runoff and violated P & Z rules because the produce grown within the hoop houses was for commercial purposes, which is not permitted in a residential zone.
This last complaint prompted P&Z’s counsel, David Cusick, to send a letter to Watkins requesting another meeting on Oct. 11 to revisit the question of commercial use. West Lowe chaired the follow-up meeting in the absence of P & Z Chairman William Riiska.
Sconyers immediately insisted that any further discussion of the case be limited solely to comments on the Cusick letter.
“We won’t tolerate a repeat of the last meeting,” he said, likening those proceedings to a “witch hunt” and a “dog-and-pony show” during which those opposed to the Watkins project “behaved like a bunch of schoolyard bullies.”
“Leslie is here to dispel the gossip and innuendo,” he concluded.
Ignoring Sconyer’s accusations, Lowe calmly replied that while the Cusick letter was the subject on the agenda up for discussion, “the public can speak freely during the period reserved for public comment.”
Sitting at the far end of the table, P&Z Alternate Larry Freedman contended icily that “at no time has this commission ever conducted a witch hunt.”
The Cusick letter centered on whether a grant that Watkins received to enhance “the business of agriculture” meant that her property was being used as a for-profit enterprise. A commission member also noted that Watkins had set up a limited liability corporation, a step that is often taken when forming a business..
Read more in the November issue of Norfolk Now!