Plans to renovate and expand the fire station in the Village of Fayetteville, NY ran into some unanticipated legal difficulties last week when two Fayetteville residents filed a lawsuit contending that the expansion would violate certain restrictive covenants in the deed to the property.
In June 2009 village residents approved a proposal to renovate the station. Officials say the upgrades are necessary to provide room for EMS vehicles and equipment. The plans call for tearing down part of the existing station and building a new, larger emergency medical services wing. The cost of the renovations is budgeted at $6.45 million.
The property is owned by the Central School District, and according to the lawsuit the deed restriction prohibits its use as a parking lot or garage unless it is built underground. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to block the renovations until the deed restrictions are properly modified.
Exactly why the plaintiffs’ feel compelled to take enforcement of the covenants into their own hands remains unclear. Perhaps they are folks who like to see deed restrictions honored – perhaps they have a personal stake in the matter, but the challenge is just one of many legal roadblocks that get thrown in front of fire departments from time to time.
We have had two incidents over the past several years where we were blocked from building fire stations. Both were new stations whereas this was not so much litigation related to violation of a restricted covenant but for the reasons of noise, lights, devaluation of property value for surrounding property, hazardous to life and limb to the local children and pedestrians. On all of those events the department held public hearings and lots of meetings with the surrounding developers and individual meetings with established residents. We built the stations but it took a long time to work through this public process and get the stations built. Over time the cranky neighbors moved and for the new residents, the fire station was part of the community fabric. Taking the legal course to slow down the process only makes sense of there have been the erosions on restrictive covenants in the remainder of the community. Working through that process early on through due diligence and public meetings may have short circuited this challenge to the fire station remodel. Live and learn and hopefully the reader of this blog thinks through the process – local government cannot “bulldoze” through many municipal projects without public hearings. Will the fire station be remodeled – most likely. Will they irritate the community – probably for a short period of time. Will the public benefit from this remodel – most certainly.