This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
02/15/2018 11:00 PMA group of residents is asking a court to overturn the Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC) decision to allow the Slate School, an independent elementary school run by a nonprofit entity, to be built and operated at 124 Mansfield Road.
Defendants named in the suit are the North Haven PZC, Alexander Clark (a founder of the school along with his wife Jennifer), and Sweet Meadow Farm Associates, LLC.
The plaintiffs in the case are seeking the decision of the PZC is declared “null and void,” and that the court order the PZC to deny the application for a special permit and site plan for the school.
The suit alleges that the zoning regulations the school applied for a special permit under are “impermissibly vague as applied to the facts of the case; in particular, as to the ability of a private school to receive a special permit as its election under subdivision (a) or (b) of 2.1.1.5 of said Regulations, and to be treated the same as a public school.”
The suit also alleges that if the regulation isn’t impermissibly vague, the PZC acted “illegally, arbitrarily, and in abuse of the discretion vested in it by law as an administrative agency” in some of the following ways: failing to deny an application that didn’t conform to its own regulations, failing to assign a proper reason for approval of the application, and deciding on the application based on factors not contained in the regulations or the record, such as the approval of the school being preferable to a possible affordable housing application in the future.
The PZC approved the special permit with conditions in November 2017. The Slate School proposes to build a nature-based elementary school serving grades kindergarten to 6. The school is to be chartered as an independent school.