Residents prevail in Article 78 challenge to Brockport Zoning Board decision; matter sent back for review

Residents living near a Brockport industrial site have won a major procedural victory in their fight against a zoning decision that allows outdoor material processing and storage on a nearby property. In a unanimous decision issued July 25, the Supreme Court of New York Appellate Division reversed a Monroe County Supreme Court order that had tossed out the neighbors’ challenge as being filed too late. The higher court ruled that because the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals never sent the variance application to the county planning agency as required by state law, the board lacked the power to grant the variance in the first place—and the 30-day clock for filing a court challenge never started ticking.

At issue is a 2023 decision by the Zoning Board of Appeals to grant Earthborn Materials, LLC permission to process landscape and construction materials outdoors and to keep piles of material outside an enclosed building on property zoned for light industrial campus-style uses. A group of Brockport and Sweden residents sued under Article 78 of New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules, arguing that by failing to refer Earthborn’s request to the county planning agency, the board’s action was jurisdictionally defective and thus void.

he village code for Brockport’s Limited Industrial District requires that all processing be done inside a building and that no materials stay permanently outdoors. To get around those rules, Earthborn applied for an “area variance,” which allows relief from certain zoning requirements if the applicant shows hard-ship and that the variance won’t harm the community.

Under state law (General Municipal Law § 239-m), any zoning board in New York must send applications for use or area variances to the county planning agency for review, unless the county and municipality have expressly agreed to exempt specific types of cases. Although Brockport and Monroe County had such an exemption agreement on file, the Appellate Division concluded that it did not cover Earthborn’s request—because the agreement only waived referral for certain setback, size, landscaping and sign variances, not for variances authorizing outdoor processing or storage.

Because the county never got the application, the Appeals Court said, the Zoning Board of Appeals never had proper authority to approve it. That meant the 30-day window to challenge the decision in court never began. The higher court therefore reversed the dismissal, reinstated the neighbors’ petition and annulled the variance approval, sending the case back to the Zoning Board of Appeals to start over—with the proper county referral in place.

Next steps: The Zoning Board must refer any new variance application to Monroe County for its input, then re-evaluate Earthborn’s request under the standard rules for variances.

The full ruling can be found at: https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad4/Clerk/Decisions/2025/0725T1500/pdf/0412.pdf

Note: AI was utilized in writing this article to help explain the court ruling in laymen’s terms.