Mayor Assails Tarrytown Appeal of GM Case

Tarrytown is only wasting taxpayers' money—in two villages—by appealing its “unequivocal” loss in the Lighthouse Landing court case, Sleepy Hollow Mayor Ken Wray contends.

“I would hope that they would have the sense to step back and re-read the judge’s decision,” the mayor said at the Board of Trustees meeting this week. He made his remarks after Tarrytown officials, citing a wish to preserve their options, served notice that they intend to seek a review of last month’s state Supreme Court decision.

That ruling, by Justice James Hubert, had been seen as ending a five-year court fight over plans to turn 96 riverside acres—the onetime General Motors minivan site—into an $800 million mixed-use complex of residential retail, office and recreation development.

Instead, Tarrytown filed a notice of appeal Tuesday, saying it wants assurances that Sleepy Hollow will “commit sufficient funds” to manage expected traffic congestion. At the same time, however, Tarrytown Administrator Mike Blau said in a statement, “the village does not have to pursue the appeal.”

Blau wants to know, among other things, how much of “$11.5 million in funds Sleepy Hollow is requiring from the developer is to be used to mitigate the traffic impacts in Tarrytown.” 

For his part, Sleepy Hollow’s mayor, in a statement, succinctly summed up the court’s decision as “we won, they lost.” In his remarks Tuesday, Wray called it “a resounding, straightforward and very unequivocal win for us.”

“After wasting well over $100,000 of taxpayer funds on a frivolous lawsuit,” Wray said, “Tarrytown is now indicating that they're willing to waste hundreds of thousands more of taxpayer dollars on what will be a fruitless and costly appeal.”

(The costs so far amount to $163,756.11, Patch has learned. You can examine the figures here.)

He told the trustees that “after so clearly losing,” Tarrytown was “going forward... with nothing in the way of a legal argument to sustain a valid appeal.”

Wray called the move “nothing but a waste of resources for both villages and is nothing more than either a delaying tactic or an attempt to...make us go away.”

Blau, in his statement, held out hope for a non-judicial resolution of the dispute, suggesting that if “Sleepy Hollow will commit sufficient funds to address the impacts in Tarrytown of the development project... it will not be necessary for Tarrytown to proceed with the appeal.”

Follow Patch for continuing updates on this story.

Like us on Facebook  |  Follow us on Twitter  |  Sign up for our newsletter