An Orange County Supreme Court judge has dismissed on technical grounds a lawsuit seeking to reverse decisions made by the Deerpark Planning Board regarding a proposed development at New Century, according to a court order filed on Sept. 4.
In January, William Smith, president of the unincorporated Lower Huguenot Neighborhood Alliance, took the town and New Century to court to reverse the environmental decision and subject the company to a more demanding review under the New York state Environmental Quality Review Act.
New Century is represented by counsel from law firm Blustein, Shapiro, Frank & Barone.
As the counsel noted, under state law, a challenge to a town planning board decision must be initiated within 30 days after the filing of such a decision with the town clerk’s office. That did not happen here.
Contrary to the plaintiffs’ arguments about inconsistencies in timestamps and potentially falsified documents, McElduff found the challenged board resolutions were filed with town clerk Florence Santini on Sept. 29, more than two months before the suit.
McElduff also found that Smith and his neighborhood alliance lacked standing to sue because petitioners failed to adequately “allege ... who these members were and/or where their property was located.”
What’s more, the court stated that the petitions failed to prove that Smith, its only identified member, owned property near or otherwise affected by New Century’s development.
Though Smith’s counsel later supplied more membership information in replies to the defendants’ dismissal motion, it was unable to cure the insufficiency of the petition itself. Instead, a cross-motion should have been filed to amend the petition, according to the judge.
New Century COO Peter Wei told The Epoch Times in a statement that he is pleased with the court decision, and that if everything goes as planned, the development will further revive the former equestrian site and boost the local economy in an environmentally responsible way.
Ties to NYenvironcom
Since the birth of the Lower Huguenot Neighborhood Alliance, the unincorporated group has maintained a close relationship with the New Paltz-based NYenvironcom.Many of the developments opposed by the groups have been put forth by members of the growing Chinese diaspora in the area, many of whom are Falun Gong practitioners who fled religious persecution in China.
Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By 1999, between 70 million and 100 million people had taken up the practice in China, according to official estimates at the time. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), fearing the practice’s membership outnumbered that of the Party, began a brutal campaign of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners that continues to this day.
Once in the United States, some practitioners still face transnational repression under the direction of the communist regime. According to a CCP directive document previously obtained by The Epoch Times, the regime frames the Dragon Springs campus in the town of Deerpark as the global “headquarters” of Falun Gong and has called for the perpetration of strategic and systematic attacks against it.
The Epoch Times’ previous investigation found that NYenvironcom’s founder and executive director, Alex Scilla, lived in China for more than a decade and still maintains business interests there.
The Epoch Times reached out to Smith, Scilla, and Grace Woodard, who heads the Deerpark Rural Alliance, for comment but received no reply by publication time.
