Thursday, October 10, 2024

Piermont, Garmento Mayor Tucker Violate Court Order.

Piermont, New York village government and its Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker just committed a remarkable error in judgment. The Village of Piermont just violated a court order – that is, the May 30, 2024 Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) of New York State Supreme Court Justice Hal B. Greenwald, J.S.C. This one:


Here is what happened. Piermont village government and Garmento Mayor Tucker just got wind of something. One of Justice Greenwald’s clerks just indicated by phone this week that the Judge would be handing down His Honor's written decision by end of day tomorrow (Friday) in the case of Young v. Piermont et al., Index No. 032252/2024 (Sup. Ct., Rockland Co., April 24, 2024). These days, “handing down” actually means “uploaded to the court website”:
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/DocumentList?docketId=RJq7nHtE18Bw8zpsaHieVw==&display=all&courtType=Rockland%20County%20Supreme%20Court&resultsPageNum=1
 
That in turn triggered the Village of Piermont and Mayor Tucker to violate Justice Greenwald’s May 30, 2024 court order – to which they were actually dumb enough to admit in writing through counsel in today’s October 10, 2024 letter just uploaded to the court website. Of course, by doing this, they were once again attempting to steal the Judge's fire and essentially pre-empt the Court's decision - typically not the best idea to do when a court's decision is imminent:


As you know, the Young v. Piermont litigation relates to the proposed awful real estate development at 447-477 Piermont Avenue and the related CBM district zoning change requiring General Municipal Law (GML) referral to the County of Rockland. So – read the TRO from May 30, 2024:




It is right there as plain as the red nose on Bruce Tucker’s face.


The May 30, 2024 court order restrains and enjoins the Village of Piermont and others from “processing… site plan/subdivision[] and special permit applications concerning real property situated at 447-477 Piermont Avenue” [emphasis added], pending the determination of the Order to Show Cause. Yet the Order to Show Cause will not be determined until, at earliest, tomorrow. The TRO is still in effect today and tonight. Read it again:


“Processing”. That’s the key word. Right here:
 
Yet by now, y’all and I well know that Piermont’s General Municipal Law (GML) referral to the County of Rockland, is a legally-mandated component part of the process of a site plan/subdivision with attendant special permit application in New York State. The GML referral is actually a sine qua non thereof – essentially, as used here in context, a Latin phrase for “that without which the other things wouldn’t exist”. Although I could do without the forward-slash in the text of the underlying court order, a New York village's consummated site plan/subdivision with an attendant special permit application doesn't exist without a GML referral.
 
Therefore, when the Village of Piermont and Garmento Mayor Tucker electronically issued the October 10, 2024 letter through counsel to Justice Greenwald today - not to mention the additional and separate acts of uploading the letter to the New York State Unified Court System/New York State Courts Electronic Filing (NYSCEF) court website, and copying the letter to “[a]ll counsel via NYSCEF” - Piermont and Tucker did what the May 30, 2024 court order signed by the self-same State Supreme Court judge expressly prohibited them from doing.



To recap:
 
Justice Greenwald’s court order commanded, in effect, “Piermont Village, do not process any site plan, subdivision, or special permit application relating to 447-477 Piermont Avenue until and after the Order to Show Cause is determined”.
 
So today, the Village of Piermont and Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker did what the court order expressly forbade them from doing. They went and “re-”submitted the GML referral to Rockland County – a GML referral which is the sine qua non of the CBM district zoning change which in turn is the sine qua non of the 447-477 Piermont Avenue development. In an unbelievable demonstration of arrogance, not to mention obliviousness, Piermont and sheet-and-towel salesman Tucker thereby further processed the 447-477 developer’s plan and application while openly and wantonly flouting, thwarting, and violating the Court’s order. The plaintiffs and other Piermont residents should be outraged. I don’t think that Justice Greenwald or the Rockland County Department of Planning are going to like it very much, either. 

Not to mention - there may be other guests coming.
 
Violating a New York court order can result in contempt of the court. Particularly when one intentionally disobeys a court order, the violator can be charged with criminal contempt in the second degree - a Class “A” misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of one year in jail and a fine of US$1,000. See:
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/215.50
When the violator is a public official, it is even worse. It is a true betrayal of the public trust. Of course, Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker has made a living for the last six-and-one-half years betraying the trust of the residents of Piermont, New York.
 
So, enter, the District Attorney’s Office of Rockland County, New York, and the New York State Attorney General’s Criminal Justice Division and Public Integrity Bureau.

Because if you don’t contact them first with this inquiry - I will.


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