Date: Thu 16-May-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

Syman-Cedarhurst-building

Full Text:

Homeowner Snared By Building Rules Says He's Giving Up

w/cut

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

After more than two years of litigation, several findings of contempt of court

and a weekend stay in jail, Robert Syman said he is finally giving up. He's

planning to remove the second story of his newly renovated house on Mohawk

Trail in the lakeside community of Cedarhurst.

"I think the battle is finally over," he said this week. "I've just had it.

I'm going to sharpen up my chain saw and go at it. I've got to get it down or

I will go back to jail."

According to a Danbury Superior Court order, Mr Syman has until May 23 to

remove the second story, which he constructed without a building permit in the

fall of 1994. He bought the seasonal cottage in April of that year for

$39,000.

"The place was totally rotted," he said. "The roof was leaking like a sieve,

the flooring was rotted out, the windows were broken. The more I got into it,

the worse it got.

"I dug out the foundation, put in footings, replaced the roof, added

insulation, new windows, new siding, new floors. I ripped the porch off and

replaced it, keeping the same footprint of the house. I paid a licensed

electrician and a licensed plumber so that everything would meet or exceed the

[building] code. But I could never get [town officials] to even do a building

inspection."

That, town officials say, is because the quality of the work is not the issue.

The problem revolves around the fact that Mr Syman did the work without a

permit and after he had been warned not to do it, according to Mark A.R.

Cooper, director of the Newtown Health District.

"This was a flagrant violation of the building and zoning regulations," Mr

Cooper said. "These [properties in Cedarhurst] were campsites, and the

cottages that were built on them were not meant to be used year-round. Mr

Syman's house is a seasonal dwelling on one-tenth acre of land. It has a

non-conforming septic of unknown reliability and a very limited area for

subsurface water disposal. It doesn't even have a year-round water supply. A

swimming pool in the basement is not recognized as a potable, reliable source

of water."

Mr Syman, 50, said he approached town officials with his expansion plans soon

after he bought the house. He hired an engineer to draw up a septic repair

plan to replace the existing cesspool that is beneath the wooden deck in front

of the house. And he wanted to sink a well behind the house.

"The state would allow me to sink a well in the backyard because it would be

75 feet from any existing septic system," he said. "But town regulations say

you can't have a septic and a well on lots that are smaller than half an acre.

The town is more restrictive than the state."

"Everything I proposed was rejected," Mr Syman said. "It's not like I tried to

sleaze something by them. But the more I tried, the worse it got. Winter was

coming, I was living in Danbury and paying rent, and paying the mortgage on

this house. So we decided to move in. We had to make it livable. But once it

got red tagged [with a stop work order] in December [1994], I stopped working.

"I put in sheet rock and the stairs, for safety, but I didn't finish the

window trim, the counter tops or anything else. We've been living like that

ever since."

A carpenter, Bob Syman sees his battle as a reflection of the changing

character of the town.

"Twenty years ago it was a friendly town. You could do anything to make your

house better," he said. "Now people move into these big houses and no one

wants to do anything for the blue collar people who live in the lakeside

communities. If there is a problem with septics or water quality in the

borough, it gets taken care of. But the town voted down spending money to

extend the sewer system to the lakeside communities."

Mr Cooper said he has a mandate to clean up septic problems throughout the

town and to stop creating new ones.

"I'm under a sewer avoidance order from the state DEP (Department of

Environmental Protection," he said. "If septic problems develop in the

lakeside communities, the state is going to order Newtown to expand the sewer

system. I don't think the taxpayers want to spend another $100 million plus."

Lakeside Problems

Many problems exist in the lakeside communities, town officials agree,

primarily because they were built long before the modern health and building

codes were written. An unheated, uninsulated cottage on a 25-by-169-foot lot,

with a cesspool and water drawn from a community well during the summer, may

not have been a problem when it was used for less than three months a year.

Converting that same structure into a year-round house today isn't permitted

if it doesn't have an approved septic and water supply.

While renovating the house, which he shares with his wife, Cindy, Bob Syman

converted the first floor into an attractive living room, a new country

kitchen with oak cabinets and a half-bath, using both new and salvaged

materials.

"The kitchen range came from Regis Philbin's Greenwich home and the marble (on

the floor and counter top) in the half bath are from his apartment," Mr Syman

said. Two, $600 three-month-old low-flush toilets came from a house in New

Canaan where the owner decided to replace them with a different model. The

hardwood floors were from another job.

The attic roof was lifted to make a second story that includes two bedrooms -

one used as an office - and a bathroom. He enclosed the foundation to make a

basement which contains an 1,800-gallon cistern, a plastic-lined wooden tank

that captures rainwater from the gutters - the only water supply when the

community system shuts down from Labor Day to Memorial Day. When that happens,

the Symans use bottled water for drinking and cooking.

"I've always been paying taxes based on a two-bedroom house," Mr Syman said.

"My taxes went up from $700 to $2,200 in the revaluation. Yet [town officials]

are telling me that it has to be a seasonal house. I can't afford a cottage in

Newtown."

The Case History

Bob Syman spent a weekend in the Bridgeport Correctional Facility on a

contempt of court charge last month after he failed to obey a court order to

demolish the second story and because he twice missed court dates in the

town's lawsuit against him.

"I got some bad advice along the way," he admitted. "[A realtor] told me that

if I went ahead and did the work, it would come under the amnesty program the

town had in 1994 for work that was done without a permit. And my lawyer told

me it wasn't necessary for me to go to court. I got rid of that lawyer and

hired [local attorney] Bill Denlinger last week. Maybe if I had hired him to

begin with, I wouldn't have had all this trouble."

In March of 1995 Danbury Superior Court Judge Howard Moraghan found Mr Syman

to be in contempt of court, ordered that the second story be removed and the

roof be returned to its original configuration. The judge also ordered a fine

of $500 a day for every day that no demolition work is done. When Mr Syman

appealed, State Trial Referee T. Clark Hull ruled on May 22, 1995, that Mr

Syman had 60 days to obtain all necessary permits or remove the second story.

Six months later, Judge Moraghan found Mr Syman in contempt again but the

judge granted him the ability to purge his contempt ruling and avoid jail by

getting a permit and demolishing the second story by December 27, 1996.

Bob Syman got the permit but no demolition work began. On February 18, 1997,

Judge Moraghan awarded the town $8,719 in attorney fees and the town placed a

lien against Mr Syman's property.

A third motion for contempt was filed by the town on February 20. On April 25,

when Mr Syman appeared in court, Judge Moraghan sent him to jail for the

weekend.

"I was in there with hardened criminals - it was horrible," Mr Syman said.

"I've been working in Newtown for 30 years, and I've never been arrested or in

trouble in all that time. Now the judge says if I don't remove the second

story, I will go back to jail indefinitely."

The experience has cost the Symans dearly. Trying to get the work on the house

done quickly, he put the $40,000 worth of renovations on credit cards. He

faces more than $150,000 in possible fines, the almost $9,000 in town attorney

fees plus the money he has spent on his own attorneys - three of them to date.

To remove the second story and reconstruct the attic, he is required to submit

plans that will be reviewed by Mr Cooper, Zoning Enforcement Officer Bill

Nicholson and Building Inspector Al Brinley. He will need a permit to re-roof

and to change the plumbing and electrical work.

"It would probably cost another $15,000 to reframe and refinish it," Mr Syman

said. "I will be a shambles. I'll have to go rent an apartment. This just gets

worse and worse. I'm just worn out."

Despite the litigation, some town officials are sympathetic about Mr Syman's

plight. Mr Nicholson went back to court this week to look at the documents and

see whether some accommodation could be made to keep at least one bedroom and

the bathroom upstairs.

"The judge's ruling made it very clear that he has to take the roof back down

to where it was," Mr Nicholson said. "It might be possible to leave the

bathroom up there. But that doesn't change the fact that the house is still

for seasonal occupancy only."

"If we allow an illegal situation to exist, and it becomes a problem, the

public will demand to know why we allowed it," Mr Nicholson said. "Neighbors

complained when Mr Syman started working on the house. How could the town

allow him to do what they aren't allowed to do?"

Bob Syman counters that most houses in the lakeside communities contain

unpermitted work. "I can't understand why the town is going after me when

there are so many illegal additions around. But I won't rat anyone out. I

don't want anyone else to have to go through what I've been going through."