True stories continued

I have lived in Hamburg all my life except for the time I was in the US Navy and a couple years after I got out of the Military. I grew up in this town, went to Frontier High School and even started college in this town. So needless to say I know a lot about how Hamburg has fared over the years.

In 2003 I purchased my home on Highland Pkwy across from the Big Tree Fire Hall. I fell in love with the property because it has a decent size yard and it had a wooded lot on one side and the other is separated by a large hedge line. However it didn’t take very long for everything to change here. For the most part I get along well with my neighbors. With the exception of just one neighbor, the rest of us talk and help each other when needed.

This issue with the town began in 2004 about a year after I moved in. What happened was the owner of the small wooded lot, right next door to my property, decided he wanted to build on the property. OK I thought, it’s his land so why not. What he didn’t tell everyone was he wanted to build a duplex and use it for rental property. He was also going to move south and use this property to subsidize his retirement income.

Now I have no problem with rental property but I just don’t want it right beside my house. We all know the problems that inevitably happen with absentee landlords and low rent tenants. So needless to say I was “unhappy”, to put it politely. Well apparently this guy went to the Variance Appeals Board in the town and was told he should get letters from all the neighbors saying they were OK with his build.

Up until the day he showed up at my door with the papers he wanted me to sign I had no idea he was even thinking of building. He came to my door and at first was very nice while asking for my signature, but then I started asking questions he really didn’t want to answer. He quickly became defensive and rude so as a result I refused to sign the paperwork.

Unknown to me and the rest of my neighbors he was due back in front of the Variance Appeals Board that evening to get the permission to start building. The board approved his request blindly. I found out about this a day or so later from my neighbors and I was a bit dismayed at how that happened, so I started looking into the requirements for this application to get approved. What I found out was outrageous.

You see our town codes require a prospective builder to advertise in the local news paper (Hamburg Sun) the application being made, list the date and time of the hearing for the application and make all the neighbors the property connects to aware of the hearing and the date and time. This guy didn’t do any of that. He also made a false application by listing another address for the build on the application. I couldn’t believe that the Variance Appeals Board approved this application.

Well,  I threw a fit and threatened legal action if the town didn’t follow the proper rules associated with a hearing for that kind of application. As a result the town forced the guy to do it all over again. During the subsequent hearing it was revealed that the property in question was 20 feet shy of the proper road frontage required to build a duplex in the first place. As a matter of fact one of the front doors was to be 10 feet off the side of my garage.

During that rehearing the result was the same. He was approved his variance. Soon after he  stripped the lot free of all the trees and shrubs and left a blank dirt lot with no grass or anything. Soon after he stripped the lot I found out he violated more town codes and he never did a survey of the property, so he didn’t even know the property lines before he stripped the property. Once again we go back to the appeals board for another hearing. This time I showed up with an attorney and a petition signed by most of the neighbors saying no to the build, but once again he was approved the variance.

I was in shock. How does this board approve a build that was 20 feet shy of the required road frontage and ignore the wishes of the residents near the property? At that point I reached out to the Democratic Town Board to stop this idiotic build. You see up till that point I was working with all the Democrats and I had run all their petitions for the Independence Party for several recent elections. I fully expected them to at least consider my request to stop this build but that never happened.

The only reply I received was from Dennis Gaughan telling me if I didn’t like the decisions of the Variance Appeals Board I should file an article 78 lawsuit because the Dems weren’t going to help. I asked him why and I was told because the owner was a big contributor to the Town Democratic Party. At that point I was only left with the option of filing this lawsuit so I had my lawyer send the owner a letter of intent to sue if he started building.

Subsequently the owner of the property sold it to my neighbor on the opposite side, at least that’s what I have been told and no building has started as of yet, 3 years later.

So now the questions: Why did I have to go through all that and hire an attorney to stop a build that was far short of the requirements? Why didn’t the Variance Appeals Board look into whether or not the proper procedures were followed and why didn’t they require the guy to Finnish his survey before he stripped all the trees off the property?

Well that’s not the end of bad decisions by the Variance Appeals Board because about one year later the Variance Appeals Board and the Town of Hamburg was sued over another fuck up with the Beechwood Road property. Remember that? It cost our town thousands of dollars and again pissed off an entire neighborhood. No wonder the town Democrats got their ass handed to them this election.

Am I alone when I say that our town has codes and rules for procedures for a reason? Am I alone when I expect our town boards to follows those rules? To this day this property next to me has done nothing but give me aggravation. Their still is no grass and is just a dirt lot. Weeds can’t even grow because the guy on the other side uses it as a race track for his 4 wheelers. The dust causes me to keep the windows and doors closed. My screens can’t keep all that dust out, it’s just so frustrating that the property I thought was the best buy around has turned out to be ruined by such inconsideration by those we expect to protect us from this kind of thing. It’s not a stretch to say that all the neighbors, except the guy who purchased to property, are tired of the race track!