The 4-0 vote to uphold the appeals and deny the subdivision application appears to have concluded this particular application. [Commissioner Milligan recused himself and did not participate.] However, the vote still needs to be ratified by approval of meeting minutes and findings of fact/conclusions of law before the appeal window officially opens. For some reason, the town continues to state that the appeal window opens upon taking the vote. However, an aggrieved party might very well argue that since the record is not complete until those documents are approved and signed, a court may find that the window within which an appeal may be filed should be extended accordingly.
While there were statements offered during the hearing to the effect that this matter would go to court “no matter what” that outcome is not certain. If the applicants’ legal advisors believe that the town’s decision is legally defensible, they may advise foregoing that option. In this or any instance, denial of an application need not be the end of the matter. The applicant is always free to return with a new or revised application which addresses the reasons for the previous denial.
What I do expect to happen is that there will soon be a call for substantial revisions to the town’s Zoning and Subdivision Ordinances. This could be a good thing (or not) depending on how the process works out. No ordinance is ever perfect; they can and should be reviewed as needed. However, the best use of ordinances is to consider them a road map designed to achieve certain goals. In the past, Edgewood has made reactive ordinance changes in response to a particular situation which ultimately served to turn the ordinance from a road map into a straitjacket. The prime example of this is the history of how so-called minor subdivisions are treated in the various iterations of the Subdivision Ordinance we have seen since 1999.