Page 4 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • April 30, 2014 Franklin Lakes Shawnee Drive property owner sues borough by Frank J. McMahon Bashar Sabbagh, the owner of a residential property at 670 Shawnee Drive, has filed a lawsuit against the bor- ough and the borough’s planning board as a result of a denial of his variance request for the size of his drive- way. Sabbagh is seeking reversal of the denial, claiming that denial was unsupported, arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. A large house, currently assessed at almost $1.1 mil- lion, has been constructed on the site along with the large paver block driveway, but no certificate of occupancy has been issued. As a result, no one is able to live in the house. Sabbagh claims in his lawsuit that since he first sub- mitted an application for a site plan approval in Novem- ber 2005 and received preliminary site plan approval in January 2006 he has been at odds with the planning board over the validity of the borough’s ordinances concerning the definition of impervious coverage. Sabbagh claims that the lot coverage of his property was incorrectly calculated at 33.85 percent, and later at 31.17 percent when a pool was eliminated from the plan, because it includes the driveway which Sabbagh says is pervious, meaning that water will drain through the paver blocks by way of small joints between the interlocking paver blocks which have been left open to facilitate the absorption of water. Joseph A. Ferriero, Sabbagh’s attorney, points out that during the public hearing on the variance application, Nasr Sheta Ph.D., a civil engineer, testified as an expert on behalf of Sabbagh that the driveway was permeable and would function so that no surface water runoff would be generated by the 7,200 square foot driveway when sub- jected to up to 24 hours of rain at one inch per hour. According to Ferriero, however, Eileen Boland, the borough’s professional engineer, testified that during subsequent testing of the driveway it initially absorbed runoff water, but within the first hour it was no longer absorbing the rainwater runoff. Nevertheless, Ferriero claims the borough’s soil moving ordinance violates the United States and New Jersey State Constitutions and it is void because of vague- ness. He says that the original borough ordinance that defined impervious coverage is unconstitutionally vague and it was drafted in a manner that fosters arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement because it does not provide clear guidelines and is impermissibly vague. Ferriero claims the ordinance adopted by the borough in October 2010 to define “total coverage” was enacted (continued on page 10)