The adult children of late village residents returned to the Village of Plandome to petition the Board of Trustees once more to lower the $40,000 fees it is asking to close open permits before they can sell the house.
Mark and Julia Brickell, the children of the deceased property owners, and their attorney, Ken Robinson, attended the Monday, Feb. 9 board meeting.
The Brickell family’s house on 44 North Drive has two open permits—one for a change to the porch by the prior owner from 1958 and one for a renovated bathroom from 1999.
Mark Brickell showed a records access request that claimed “no such data or record exists” for “Village of Plandome building permit extension fee schedules from 1958 through 2025.”
He said he then went to the building inspector, who “showed us his copies of the village code that were collected by his father dating back to 1955.”
“Subsequently, [the building inspector] found that the code was amended in a substantial way in 2002, which you probably know,” Mark Brickell said. “And it was in that year that the provision was added to charge a monthly fee for a certificate of completion that had not yet been acquired.”
Mark Brickell said there was no monthly fee in 1958 or 1999 when the permits were taken out, and the building inspector calculated a fee in the hundreds of dollars, far less than the $40,000 figure initially billed.
Village Attorney Paul Pepper said the permits were never closed so the Brickells would have to pay the current fees. “This is not anex post factosituation,” Pepper said.
Source: LI Press
