Land Use—Allegations of Intentional and Improper Delay by Town Officials Who Abused Their Authority and Pandered to a Vocal Minority to Block Development of an Otherwise Permitted Asphalt Facility—Case Dismissed—Dispute Was Not Ripe for Decision—Project Application Was Still Pending—42 U.S.C. §1983 Claims
A plaintiff alleged that the defendant town and defendant member of the town board (defendants) “used improper, discriminatory and unconstitutional means to thwart plaintiff’s efforts to construct a hot mix asphalt plant” (project) in an industrial park. The plaintiff alleged that the defendants discriminated against the plaintiff “by: applying different standards to [the project] than to other projects proposed by similarly situated businesses; deliberately prolonging the processing of [plaintiff's] site plan application…; enacting an ordinance designed to delay, hinder and prevent [the project], and then lying about the purpose of the ordinance; refusing, in bad faith, to process [plaintiff's] site plan application; refusing to withdraw the ordinance, despite publically acknowledging its defects, and instead forcing [plaintiff] to litigate the issue in the [NYS] Supreme Court; purposefully delaying processing the site plan after the Supreme Court struck down the ordinance; and by passing a new ordinance that repeated the same problems as the earlier one.”
