The two-year battle over Wal-Mart's plan to build in North Cornwall Twp. has become this complex: About 45 people attended a zoning hearing board hearing last night, and a quarter of them were lawyers.
Several of them were testy.
"There's a pattern of trying to frustrate my client's efforts. The stakes here are very high," said George Broseman, Wal-Mart's attorney.
Last night's arguments concerned procedural issues, but even those will take another hearing to resolve before the board can move on to the meat of the complaint filed by Wal-Mart opponents: that the zoning change three years ago that paved the way for Wal-Mart to build was invalid.
It took the lawyers nearly half an hour last night to agree on a date for the next hearing.
"There are a lot of special interests at work at the expense of the township" said resident Ellie Salahub, one of the people who filed the complaint concerning the zoning change.
The 2003 zoning amendments changed the site of the planned store from office and institutional zoning to commercial, and other nearby land from agricultural to commercial.
The challenge, filed on behalf of eight property owners, says the proposed changes were not properly advertised.
Broseman argued yesterday that one member of the zoning hearing board, Anita Winer, should not participate in the issue because she has made remarks against the proposed store at other meetings. An attorney representing the property owners, Dwight Yoder, said Winer should serve because the hearing was narrowly focused on the advertisement issue and was not directly related to Wal-Mart.
If Winer stepped aside, that would leave only one board member; the chairman resigned a few weeks ago. Winer's standing will be decided at the next hearing, and the board's solicitor, Samuel Weiss, said he hopes supervisors will appoint another member and a couple of alternates by that time.
In the meantime, a challenge to the supervisors' vote approving Wal-Mart more than a year ago is languishing in Lebanon County court.
Opponents say the board's 2-1 vote on Dec. 28, 2005, to approve Wal -Mart's plans was not valid because the written decision did not come until Jan. 23, when Supervisor Charles Brooks was no longer a member of the board. They also claim the approval should be thrown out because, among other reasons, Wal -Mart should have been required to submit a second revised plan and the traffic study wasn't complete.
The Dec. 28 vote followed 16 public hearings on the application, several of them lasting all day.