The Town of Montgomery’s planning board, after reviewing its latest project, pondered a new conundrum during its May 28 meeting: Is an auto-recycling center allowed under the town code or does it qualify as a junkyard?

Jemp Management submitted an application to the planning board on May 10 proposing an outdoor automobile storage facility at Stone Castle Road, comprising 47 parking spaces. If approved, the company would purchase damaged and inoperable vehicles, store them at the site, and distribute them to automobile auctions.

“Jemp Management auctions and buys automobiles, stores them at the site, and then sells them; not off the site but it finds auctions to send the vehicles to,” said Charles Bazydlo, the applicant’s attorney and representative at the May 28 meeting. “This particular site specializes in damaged cars. If you go to the site, the cars are either damaged in the front or the back, so they’re non-operable,”

Recently, Town Engineer James Farr issued a violation for the project and labeled it as a junkyard, which is prohibited under the town code, due to handling broken vehicles. The town court is reviewing the applicant’s case to determine the project’s classification.

“We are in front of the town justice right now; one of the things I had spoken to the town attorney about was coming to the planning board, going over the site’s uses, and applying to what we think might be necessary,” Bazydlo said. “That case is being held at the jury right now as we work through this process.”

Bazydlo argued that the project should be considered an auto-recycling center, as the company would only store and distribute its vehicles from the site, rather than disassemble and sell their parts like at a junkyard.

“There is a market for these things, it’s very similar to the regular used-car market,” Bazydlo said. “There are no repairs done at the site, no dismantling of the automobiles at the site. It’s primarily a storage and sorting operation of vehicles.”

“Looking through the code, the Town of Montgomery code has an allowed UCI-1 zone for auto-recycling,” he continued. “I think this could classify as that, it’s certainly not a junkyard because parts are not being sold off the cars, you can’t come in and buy a fender or a rim. That’s not what this is.”

Fred Reichle, chairman of the planning board, stated that the town code does not define auto-recycling or outdoor storage; the closest match he could find was a junkyard, which shared similar operations to what Bazydlo described.

“Auto-recycling is not defined in our code. So I went on a DEC website and I typed in ‘auto-recycling,’ and auto-recycling is basically you get a car, take it apart, and sell or store parts, it doesn’t list storage of a car that’s inoperable in auto-recycling,” Reichle said. “I couldn’t find outdoor storage in the code either, but what I did find in our code is a definition of a junkyard, and it’s pretty clear that it includes inoperable cars in a small area. A junkyard is no longer in our table of uses and not allowed.”

Reichle requested that Bazydlo and the applicant reconsider the project’s classification to better fit within the town code and update the site plans with details for contouring and screening. He and the board mentioned that they would visit the site sometime in the future.