Ramapo, NY - Yeshiva Developer Contests Increased Town Fees

Ramapo, NY - The developer of a yeshiva with adult student housing on Grandview Avenue has complained that the municipal fees were too high.

Rabbi Aryeh Zaks, representing Mosdos Chofetz Chaim, wants the Zoning Board of Appeals to review a more than $20,000 increase in the fees.
"I hereby request a review of an arbitrary capricious subjective uninformed illegal outrageous and improper action taken by the currently suspended building inspector or one of his subordinates," Zaks wrote in a letter to the zoning board.

A building permit application dated Dec. 15, 2005, showed that Mosdos Chofetz Chaim estimated the cost of its construction at $6 million, for which the town levied a fee of $54,046.
Such fees, based on a project's size, pay for inspections during construction.
This old figures on the building permit were crossed out and new ones were wrote in, after Robert Rhodes, a longtime critic of the yeshiva project, wrote in January to Brian Brophy, the now-suspended building inspector, (he was suspended after State Police said they found $6,400 in $100 bills and marijuana in his glove box) that the construction cost estimate was too low.

The construction estimate was raised to $8.4 million from $6 million, and the town's fee was increased to $75,617 from $54,046.
No notations were made on the document to indicate who made the changes, and no one knows who crossed it out.

Zaks' complaint about the increased fee is to be heard by the zoning board on May 4.
And at the same meeting, the board will review Zaks' complaint over a violation issued by the Building Department for a preschool program operating at the construction site.