Hearings Without End

After seven appearances before the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, Shahab Karmely had had enough. So, too, did Kenneth Kuchin, his neighbor and adversary in a bitter proceeding about a tennis court, who time and again since early this year went to a zoning board meeting for yet another continuation of what should have been an open-and-shut hearing. So-called continuations are the rule rather than the exception in East Hampton Village zoning matters. They should not be.

Elsewhere, notably at the town zoning board of appeals, continuations are rare. There, as in other towns and villages, applications are heard in a formal way, more as they would in a court appearance, with which they share characteristics. Not so in the village, where a sense of horse-trading continues to prevail. 

Lawyers who appear regularly before the village zoning board know how it works: Draw out the affair as long as possible with late submissions and/or offers to tweak applications and return in a month. But it gums up the works and gives the impression that those with means and expertise are able to be persistent enough to get what they want in the end. That is not how it is supposed to work.

There are hints that some members of the village zoning board are trying to stop late paperwork submissions. This is a good step, which would help streamline the review process and help uphold the zoning code. It may be that the village zoning board is only trying to be fair, but the result is that it allows people to run out the clock and maneuver their ways around it.