Did Oyster Bay invent a grandmother to deny a mosque? The town says no.

Lawyers for a mosque suing Oyster Bay Town over the denial of its expansion plan are sparring with town officials over the testimony of a woman whose concerns were cited in the rejection.

Lawyers for Muslims on Long Island Inc., which owns the Masjid Al-Baqi mosque on Central Avenue in Bethpage, said the town invented the unidentified "grandmother" and her testimony to bolster the denial. The town contends she exists and is Nassau Legis. Rose Marie Walker (R-Hicksville), Oyster Bay spokesman Brian Nevin told Newsday. 

Walker has served in the county legislature since 2010 and is a longtime fixture in Nassau and Oyster Bay politics. Her son, Rob Walker, was former Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano's top deputy.

After the town's planning advisory board denied the mosque's bid to expand in December, MOLI filed a federal lawsuit challenging the decision. The plan would have roughly tripled the size of the mosque in a single building equipped with a larger prayer room and new wudu stalls, where congregants can ritually wash their hands, feet and face before prayer.

The denial comes years after the town halted construction on a Sikh temple in Plainview during its expansion amid concerns about parking. That three-story house of worship opened in 2018 after the temple settled its federal lawsuit with the town, Newsday previously reported. In January, a judge sided with the Hillside Islamic Center in New Hyde Park, which had challenged the North Hempstead Town's decision to deny the center's expansion plan.

The trend of municipalities using zoning codes to deny house of worship plans, including expansions, isn't exclusive to Long Island. According to the American Civil Liberties Union's web page on anti-mosque activity, nationally in recent years "there have been efforts to block or deny necessary zoning permits for the construction and expansion of other facilities."

Attorneys for the Bethpage mosque recently raised doubts about the veracity of a complaint cited in the town's denial, which was dated Dec. 26. The denial letter said "a resident testified that while dropping off her grandchildren at a local day care in her sports utility vehicle she was unable to fit down the residential streets with the overflow parking from the place of worship." 

Attorneys for the mosque said they reviewed town hearing transcripts and found no record of a grandmother testifying to that effect.

In a July 27 filing, attorneys for the mosque cited testimony from town officials in separate depositions that they say supports their claim. The officials' testimony, they said, shows the town was "relying on the troubles of a fictitious grandmother to justify its vote ..."

But town officials are rebutting that characterization.

"A fake witness was not invented," Nevin said in a statement to Newsday in which he identified Walker as the woman cited in the denial.

Officials deposed

Nevin pointed to a deposition in which Scott Byrne, the town's deputy commissioner of planning and development, referenced "the identity of the grandmother (Rose Walker)."

"I remember Rose Walker saying that specifically," Byrne said, according to the transcript of a deposition he participated in, dated July 21. He said she did not relay the full substance of her comments publicly to the planning board. 

"She didn't go into that detail on the record. She said that to me at another time," he said, according to the deposition. "I couldn't say when it happened, but Rose Walker did tell me that story."

Walker told the board she was concerned whether a fire truck could travel the road by the mosque during an emergency, according to Byrne. But, Byrne said, "she just didn't go into the great detail that she went into in a different conversation that I am remembering with the grandmother and the daycare and sports utility vehicle."

Byrne said, " ... I think I merged her two stories together," according to the deposition transcript. 

"I said, it was my mistake, as I explained before, remembering two separate conversations with the same point and thinking it was one piece of testimony," Byrne said.

Mary Studdert, a spokeswoman for Walker, said "it would be inappropriate" to comment on an ongoing lawsuit.

Tangle over testimony

Lawyers for the mosque said the testimony of other town officials is an admission the grandmother was invented, filings show.

One exchange involved a deposition with Angelo Stanco, the chairman of the town's planning advisory board. After an attorney for the mosque asked, "So would you agree that the grandmother is a composite character that didn't exist?" Stanco replied, "It sounds like it," according to the transcript.

Then, the transcript shows, he was asked, "Is it fair to say that the grandmother is fictional?" Stanco replied, "Yes," but later said, "We didn't invent a grandmother," according to the transcript.

In their recent filing, attorneys for the mosque said the officials' testimony shows "the grandmother is not an innocent composite character formed from the testimony of two real witnesses (which would be improper enough)."

The statement continued, “Rather, she is a figment of the Town’s imagination.”

Yearslong push to expand

For more than six years, MOLI has attempted to expand its Bethpage mosque by razing two one-story buildings on its property and creating a two-story building with a basement to better serve its congregants, Newsday has reported. The organization bought the property in the 1990s and opened the mosque in 1998. It draws about 200 people at peak times, according to court filings, and about 150 students during after-school programs.

While MOLI’s proposal was under review, the town enacted a law that required parking spaces be based on a house of worship’s total occupancy — not by the number of seats in the building or by its square footage, as is calculated for other facilities.

The change increased the parking spots required to expand from 86 to 155. MOLI’s initial proposal called for 88 spaces, the suit said.

Newsday reported in April that the U.S. Justice Department had rebuked the town in a "statement of interest."

The department said MOLI is "likely to succeed on the merits ... because, under the recently revised parking code, MOLI is treated less favorably than comparable secular uses such as theaters, libraries, and museums, and the Town cannot and does not show that such unequal treatment is justified."

The case is set to go to trial in late October. 

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ