The Good Ole Days

from The New York Times
November 23, 1999

In Accord, NY, There Is Anything But; Clash of Workers and Weekenders Includes Suits and Death Threats

By KATHERINE E. FINKELSTEIN

Accord should be a place of peace.

Just 90 miles from Manhattan, this hamlet in the Hudson Valley, encircled by fruit orchards and flinty mountains, is home to two groups: plain-spoken farmers and truckers who scrape by on camaraderie and shrinking incomes, and Manhattan weekenders, who bought low-cost land from the 1970's on and restored dilapidated farmhouses into retreats.

This marriage of opposites has worked well throughout southern Ulster County, now a booming weekend destination where celebrities like Robert De Niro have built homes and where three-star restaurants have opened alongside package and hunting stores.

But in Accord, the conflicting cultures have bred a remarkable, and even bizarre, level of hostility: lawsuits have been filed; old-timers and newcomers have sworn off talking to each other, except perhaps to say something nasty; and accusations of harassment and corruption prompted both the F.B.I. and the State Attorney General to briefly open, and then close, an inquiry.

The battleground is 88 square miles of beauty within the town of Rochester, population just under 6,000.

The standoff began in 1992 over a speedway that reopened near the homes of newcomers, who have been fighting it ever since. The rancor has gone on to encompass various zoning laws -- namely who can or cannot build what where -- cries of trespassing, and most recently, an uproar over a truck shed. And in a measure of the extreme level of unease, the town has instituted a set of rules governing public meetings: no booing or hand-clapping.

Yet the issues, to hear the combatants tell it, have come to transcend property and zoning regulations. The longtime residents, some of whose families settled here in the 1600's, say they are fighting to preserve their informality and freedom, and, above all, their livelihood. The people they call the weekenders, some of whom have lived here year-round for two decades, say they want equal treatment as taxpayers and residents, and to safeguard the small-town qualities that first drew them to Accord.

''Here I come to what I think is this nice idyllic place,'' said Iris Lewis, 42, a Manhattan designer, weeping one recent morning in her stone home on 60 acres. Since then, she said, her life has turned into a nightmare.

Angered by a neighbor's truck shed, large enough for an 18-wheeler, she formed a group and sued the town last year, accusing it of selectively enforcing, and even changing, zoning laws to benefit longtime residents.

After that, cars began to trespass menacingly, idling on her property for long periods, despite the video camera and ''Keep Out'' signs on her driveway. Death threats appeared in her mailbox, Ms. Lewis said, including a cartoon last winter of stick figures crying and waving goodbye. ''Every year that I'm here,'' she said, ''it gets bigger and it gets uglier.''

Down the road, longtime residents say that Ms. Lewis and her wealthy friends are trying to remake Accord in their own image. ''Basically, this town is just farmers and truck drivers, and there's nothing we can do about it,'' said Lori Schneider, 24, who lives in a mobile home with her husband, a truck driver. The Schneiders were drawn into the fray after Ms. Lewis's group, Citizens Against Illegal Zoning, challenged their plan to build a truck garage in their backyard.

Gerald Meade Dewitt, a dairy farmer whose family has been here since 1648, said that the newcomers do not understand rural life. It ''isn't peace and quiet,'' he said. It is big trucks, rumbling farm equipment and compromise borne of poverty in a town where people scrape by to make a living. The equivalent, he said, would be like ''us going down into the city and saying, 'We don't like taxicabs anymore.' ''

From the late 1970's on, newcomers like Ms. Lewis bought land and created a tousled retreat unlike the Hamptons. Today, they own one-third of Rochester's 3,000 residential parcels. And as the town's former code enforcement officer, Michael Redmond, said recently, ''I keep constantly hearing about the people who don't live here. But everybody lives here. We're all us.''

The problems began in 1992, when a speedway that had been closed for five years roared back to life after town officials swiftly approved a special-use permit for an upstate farmer.

The newcomers demanded that the town study the environmental impact before letting the man reopen the track. But at a heated public meeting, officials contended that a town law limiting speedway noise to 79 decibels was protection enough. The newcomers were outraged, predicting a blow to their property values. The cars raced on summer weekends, bringing traffic and noise to their doorsteps. So they organized.

Lorna and Kim Massie, who moved from Brooklyn to a remodeled barn near the track in 1973, formed a protest group, Citizens Accord Inc., with 300 members. They began a legal battle that has lasted seven years; at each step, the town has successfully appealed. The speedway's owner, David Flach, a red-bearded farmer from Ravena, N.Y., says he has spent $300,000 in legal fees because the Massies have ''big mouths and big wallets.''

In 1995, the group sued the town, contending it had failed to enforce its own laws, after a sound engineer found that the speedway noise exceeded 79 decibels. The town then passed a law allowing sound levels to be averaged by measuring quiet time between races. Citizens Accord then sued town officials, accusing them of conspiring to deprive the group's members of their civil rights.

The costly litigation did not go over well with some longtime locals, who, the Massies said, began dumping garbage on their lawn, honking at them and making obscene phone calls.

The town observes its own laws, said Douglas Dymond, the code enforcement officer whose son races at the track. But he added, ''These people are against racetracks. They're against gravel pits. Their agenda goes on.''

Throughout Accord, newcomers contended that the town was giving businesses special-use permits to open in residential areas, violating zoning laws and aesthetic principles.

One longtime resident, Carlo Ferrialo, switched sides and joined Ms. Lewis's group, after a condemned bungalow colony reopened across the street from his immaculate mobile home. In memorandums, the town's building inspector, who is legally blind, reported finding no evidence of dilapidation on the site. So in June, Mr. Ferrialo hired a private surveyor who documented seven pages of violations.

By 1997, the newcomers contended that their efforts at redress were thwarted by ''collusion'' and ''conspiracy.'' At a town board meeting that year, Steve Fornal, a outspoken newcomer with long hair and a wispy goatee, handed out pamphlets that he said documented the town's manipulation of its own laws. With a withering tone, he read aloud the dictionary definition of codify. ''Note,'' he said, ''codification does not mean wholesale change of laws.'' The room exploded in applause.

The town responded by passing a law that prohibited hand-clapping, booing and demonstrating at public meetings. It also restricted citizens to addressing board members for no more than three minutes, and only if called on by the town supervisor.

Refusing to elaborate, Mr. Fornal said he had taken steps to protect himself, after his mailbox was was shot at and run over nine times.

The town supervisor, Robert Baker, who did not run for re-election and will step down on Dec. 31, did not return numerous calls seeking comment.

Last year, with paranoia and menace escalating, the newcomers found the ultimate object for their anger: a 29-by-50-foot truck shed built by a neighbor, Richard Smith. In person, Mr. Smith, 32, a slim and unassuming trucker, hardly looks like a target for fancy lawyers. But after he got a special-use permit to build a truck shed near his home, Ms. Lewis's group claimed that he was running an illegal trucking business there, and offered the Zoning Board of Appeals a stack of Polaroid photographs and public records to support its claim.

When Rochester officials upheld the permit last February, Ms. Lewis's group declared war. It sued Mr. Smith and town officials, claiming that they conspired to break zoning laws.

Richard and Jennifer Smith, meanwhile, sank $5,000 into legal fees, and held a victory party last summer after the State Supreme Court upheld their permit.

But in September, Ms. Lewis' group, Citizens Against Illegal Zoning, filed an appeal, which is pending. At an Oct. 12 meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals, Mr. Smith and Mr. Fornal got into a verbal tussle. Warned by board members to be respectful, Mr. Smith yelled, ''I don't think there's any respect in this town.'' A board member then called the state troopers and threatened to have him arrested.

The next day, Mrs. Smith, 28, sat at the kitchen table in their modest home and rifled through two years of newspaper articles, lawyers' letters and zoning documents. Like so many Accord residents, she compulsively keeps records of her battle.

''This is just to build a garage, so my husband doesn't have to lay out in the dirt and mud to do an oil change,'' she said, denying that they run a home business. ''In this town, you can't better yourself without a lawsuit. Where does it end?''

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