Court Opinion

ID: 9740829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:42:24.198882+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:20.567910
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J.
(dissenting in part). I agree that the Appellate Division committed an error of law in holding that the absence of a special permit barred petitioner’s application for a real property tax exemption. On my view of the record, however, that error was the sole basis on which the application was or could have been denied. I therefore see no need to remit for further proceedings, and would simply grant petitioner’s motion for summary judgment annulling the denial of the tax exemption.
Petitioner presented to the respondent Board of Assessment Review (BAR) and to the courts below a development plan, pre*414pared by an outside land use planner, to use the property for outdoor religious activities, including'Stations of the Cross, a grotto of Our Lady, an outdoor chapel and a rosary path. It is not disputed that the property, if so used, would be entitled to a tax exemption, so the only possible issue is whether the proposed use was “in good faith contemplated” within the meaning of RPTL 420-a (3) (a). I see no basis in the record for doubting that it was.
No evidence suggests, and no one has advanced the theory, that petitioner’s plan for the property was a sham designed to preserve a tax exemption, and that the petitioner was in fact planning to leave the property unimproved or to develop it in some nonexempt way. The sole fact on which the BAR and the courts below relied in denying the exemption was that petitioner had not fulfilled applicable legal requirements for its proposed use—principally, that it had not applied for or obtained a special permit. But petitioner’s reason for not applying was that it did not believe a special permit to be required; in petitioner’s view, the proposed use would constitute a “[c]hurch [or] other place [ ] of worship” under the applicable zoning ordinance. Whether petitioner is right or wrong about this, its decision not to apply for a special permit does not, under these circumstances, create any doubt about its good faith in contemplating the development described in its submission.
The BAR denied a tax exemption solely because “no formal plans, building permits, special permits or other occurrences legally required to make use of the property . . . have been filed, applied for or undertaken.” The BAR did not find the petitioner was not intending to use the property in the way it said it was, or even suggest there was any doubt about petitioner’s intention. Similarly, the parties’ submissions to Supreme Court contain nothing that places petitioner’s good faith in doubt. Supreme Court specifically found: “whatever parts of the . . . plan [submitted by petitioner] have not been completed . . . are contemplated in good faith.”
This finding was not challenged by respondents on appeal; it was not disturbed by the Appellate Division; and it was not (and could not be) questioned in this Court. Indeed, it seems that the parties and the lower courts have operated on the assumption that petitioner’s right to a tax exemption turns entirely on the issue of whether a special permit is a prerequisite to the exemption. Since we unanimously rule in petitioner’s favor on this issue, I see no basis for denying summary judgment to petitioner.
*415Accordingly, I would reverse and grant petitioner’s motion for summary judgment, and I respectfully dissent from so much of the Court’s opinion as does otherwise.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges G.B. Smith, Rosenblatt, Graffeo and Read concur with Judge Ciparick; Judge R.S. Smith dissents in part in a separate opinion.
Order reversed, etc.