The Village of North Hills Board of Trustees entered into an agreement with Skinnon & Faber to conduct the village’s annual financial audit next year at its board meeting Wednesday night, while also continuing to discuss the proposal for the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists.
Village Administrator Marianne Lobaccaro said the board contracts out with an auditing firm for an annual village financial audit. Skinnon & Faber will be the firm the village works with for its 2023-2024 audit.
The board also continued its public hearing for the proposal of additions and renovations to the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists in North Hills, which has been ongoing since January.
No decision was made during the public hearing at the North Hills Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday as the trustees opted to reserve their decision on the matter.
This is the second time the board has reserved their decision on the application, also doing so in October. The public hearing is expected to continue at the board’s December meeting.
The church, located at 7 Shelter Rock Road, is proposing a series of changes to the building and site, including expanding the parking lot, the building’s setback, a new recording studio and other building expansions.
The proposal is requesting variances for the building’s height, distance to the property line, building and structure coverage, floor area ratio and required parking spaces.
Kathleen Deegan Dickson, an attorney representing the church, said during the October board meeting that the project plans had changed to address neighbor requests to mitigate impacts on their properties.
This included widening the access easement to 20 feet, moving the upper parking lot further from the property line, adjusting the rear landscaping and painting the building a neutral color.
Two neighboring residents have expressed concerns with the church’s proposal during the months-long public hearing, citing impacts to their properties.
One of the neighbors who was initially opposed to its expansion said at the October meeting that they are now okay with the amended project plans.
The second neighbor still had concerns about the church’s proposed setback along his property line.
Mayor Marvin Natiss questioned at the October meeting whether the building’s expansion falls within the scope of religious use, which is assessed differently than other uses, as the purpose of the expansion is for accommodating office spaces and events.
“If it was just for religious use, I’d understand our limitations, but because you’re telling me it has offices and banquets and people all being in the same rooms at the same time, I do have some concern,” Natiss said.
Natiss also pointed out that the original application proposed the plans as an expansion of a commercial use and was later changed to an expansion of a religious use. Deegan Dickson said this was a typo that was not caught by her prior to submitting the application.
Village attorney A. Thomas Levin said the scope of religious use has been determined in courts to be broader than religious services and practices. Dickson confirmed this, explaining that the church’s use of office spaces and banquet halls is still for the purpose of their religious practices.
“Just like any other religious institution, you need to have administrative offices,” Dickson said. “If you want to have other religious leaders come visit you, you need a place to have lunch.”
Dickson said the current spaces are used for multiple purposes and require them to be converted for different uses. She said this proposal would provide separate rooms for different uses.
She said that while the building plans are to expand the building, the church’s operations are not expanding with it. She said the purpose of the building expansion is to accommodate the existing use and the church’s religious use will remain the same as it has been since the 1970s when it was established.
The North Hills Board of Trustees will convene again on Dec. 20 where the public hearing for the church will continue.
