Meeting called to order by Vice Chairman Joseph Graceffo with a salute to the flag.
ROLL CALL:
Vice Chairman Joseph Graceffo
John DiMeglio David Slater
Mayor Dan Mahler Ed O’Connell
Kevin Platt John Shutte
PRESENT: Attorney Steven Veltri and Engineer Michael Cristaldi
ABSENT: Chairman Gilbert Foulon, Members William Rucci and Eugene Verba
READING: Open Public Meeting Announcement
This is a Regular Meeting of the Wanaque Borough Planning Board and adequate notice has been given and it has been duly advertised by the placement of a notice in the Trends and the Herald News, mailed on January 16, 2009 and a notice thereof has been posted on the bulletin board in the Municipal Building in the Borough of Wanaque and a copy thereof has been on file with the Borough Clerk.
MINUTES: from the September 17, 2009 Meeting.
MOTION TO APPROVE: made by Member Slater, seconded by Member Platt, voting yes were Members DiMeglio, Mahler, Platt, Slater and O’Connell. Vice Chairman Graceffo and Member Shutte abstained.
COMMUNICATIONS REPORT: No questions on correspondence.
APPLICATIONS STATUS REPORT: Eng. Cristaldi said he has no new applications to report.
HIGHLANDS ACT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON MASTER PLAN
PRESENTERS: BOB TESSIER & TOM CARROLL, BOROUGH ADMINISTRATOR
Bob Tessier: This is my second presentation to you on the Highlands. The first time we spoke about the Highlands Initial Assessment, which talked about where the Borough is versus where the Highlands Plan was, and the path to go through with the Modules and go into the Plan Conformance. Some areas of Wanaque are in the Highlands Planning Area, which is optional for the Borough to opt in or opt out of the Highlands. The area of Wanaque, which does have significant developed portions, is in the preservation area and that is non-optional participation. You have a track where you can go into conformance where you can make modifications to what the Highlands does, otherwise, the Highlands Council usurps the local authority and then takes over the whole planning functions. We are able to avoid this by going through conformance for both the preservation and planning areas.
Referring to the Map that was part of their Regional Master Plan, you can go and petition and get areas changed. What they set up is a series of zones, such as an Environmental Conservation Zone, Existing Community Zone, and Lake Community Subzone. When they did the Lake Subzone, I don’t believe they took into account that it is a reservoir even though it has that huge embankment that separates it. They are looking at saying it is a lake community so I think there is some opportunity to change some of the areas, but this is their basic primary zoning.
After the Initial Assessment, we received a database from the Highlands. For Modules 1 and 2, we went through every lot in the borough, and worked with the Borough Administrator and Staff to determine what has sewer, water, what is developed and undeveloped. The product of that is the Municipal Build-Out Report, which the Highlands produced with our input. All Board Members received a copy to review at their leisure.
We are going to review just a few pages of this Build-Out Report to explain what the Highlands Council then did with our data. At the bottom of the first page, it talks about future activities and the Plan Conformance will address additional capacity and projected build-out analysis. They talk about Highlands Re-Development areas and you have re-development areas in your Plan and Town Center in your Plan. They are not including any of those in this build-out analysis. That is the next process we are going to go through with them and show them those areas.
On page 6, they have identified zero (0) acres in their analytical analysis as potential for re-developable areas. The next step is to talk to them about that. In the build-out, they also say what is exempt, any projects which are already approved, and any projects, such as the one you have the court case pending, are not subject to the regulations of the Highlands.
Vice Chairman Graceffo questioned Mr. Tessier about the Mountain Lakes project.
In Mountain Lakes, or another development in the Highlands that is in litigation, if the Court takes it out, are they exempting it from this Building Analysis? Highlands is saying their Build-Out does not include those types of areas that are jurisdiction of the Courts or have a pre-approval. I am not saying what the status of that project is, but I am saying that project could fall into that.
Vice Chairman Graceffo asked, if they win in the courts, they can come back and potentially build even though it is now defined as a restricted area? Mr. Tessier advised it all depends on what the court determines.
Tom Carroll: At this point, and I have not heard whether or not that they filed an appeal, based on the Commissioners’ Ruling, the project does not have any approvals at all. All of their DEP approvals are gone and, since they did not have their approvals in place by March of 2004/2005, whatever the date was, they would not have a Highlands Exemption. Any decision that goes to the Appellate Division, is going to make a decision based on the record that is below, which is the applicability and validity of the permits that Mountain Lakes and Lakeside Manor had gotten from DEP that expired anywhere between the year 2000 and 2004. It is going to be a court decision, if it is appealed, as to whether or not it is going to be built or not, Highlands or no Highlands.
Bob Tessier: On page 2 it talks about developments that have been approved, but not completed as of 08/2009, potential future development that may be exempt from the Highlands Act, and the designation of Highlands Redevelopment Areas and that is where we are going to work with them to designate those redevelopment areas.
Vice Chairman Graceffo asked why do you think they actually said there is no identifiable redevelopment land in their Build-Out Report? Mr. Tessier believes that they have done that everywhere. What they have said in their instructions is when you come in with the Master Plan Element, which is the next Element, then that is what we are going to sit down and meet with them about and say that we have these areas that we want to have included. We have prepared a map, which proposes our town centers and redevelopment areas. I don’t think they have designated any in the Highlands yet. I might be wrong, but they certainly haven’t designated very many, if they have.
Tom Carroll: The process that we are going to go through after tonight is Bob, Fred and I will go meet with the Highlands people to explain all of this and make the arguments for the redevelopment areas that we have in place. Keep in mind, that anything that is in Haskell, be it Fourth Avenue, what has been completed on Ringwood Avenue, and what we have on Union Avenue, is in the planning area not in the preservation area. The redevelopment ends at the four stores on Kressaty’s side. We are going to go in and inform them and, apparently they are not aware of, that we have three redevelopment areas in the preservation area, (the Borough Hall property, the property we proposed the new Borough Hall on, and the property where Rita’s is and the property next door and the property behind that), so that ultimately gets incorporated into the Highlands Master Plan. As Bob said, they came in and said there is nothing because they did not have any data on that and we are going to provide them with that in order to get it put into the Plan.
Bob Tessier: The direction they are coming from shows in their report when they talk about having one unit per twenty-five acres of non-forested land and one unit per eighty-eight acres of forested land. That is kind of a model they are throwing over all the Highlands communities and that is why the build-out analysis, except for the things that are excluded, that are approved, show such low numbers.
Tom Carroll: For all intents and purposes, in the preservation area, we are completely built-out. You are not going to see any more homes up off Conklintown Road, except for whatever happens with Mountain Lakes Estates. The potential to subdivide properties on the other side of the reservoir is minimal because of the two acre zoning that we have there. There may be several lots that might be done, but they are only going to be able to be subdivided for one lot. The properties that are in the preservation area on this side of Ringwood Avenue, keeping in mind that on the north side of town, the line runs down the middle of Ringwood Avenue, for the most part are all developed. Any changes there, Highlands allows for 125% of existing impervious surface to be built upon should someone tear something down and rebuild or any type of redevelopment that goes on there. The difference between planning area and the preservation area is that if the Borough wishes to re-obtain the Town Center Designation for the Haskell section of town, those requirements are also going to be imposed on the planning area. All the preservation rules and regulations are also going into the planning area. Again, for all intents and purposes, it is going to be redevelopment, as opposed to new development and that is what we are going to clear up with the Highlands.
Bob Tessier: At the end of Module 2, which is really not a policy but more of what the existing conditions were; how much sewer, how much water, how many connections, we created a database and the Highlands gave us the Build-Out Report based on that data.
Module 3 is the COAH Plan that Art Bernard is working on so I am not presenting that.
Module 4 is the Environmental Resource Inventory and we completed a draft copy, which does not have the colored maps included. When we do the final, we will have all twenty-five maps included in it. We prepared this Inventory with the grant money, and the Highlands prepared the Build-Out Report. On page 8, the Inventory has mapping to breakdown all the watersheds and sub-watersheds in the community. It contains a mapping of a slope analysis of all the slopes in the community (221 acres of moderately constrained slopes in the planning area and 193 in the preservation area). At the bottom of page 16, it gives a specific breakdown of those and there is mapping with the critical habitat analysis, threatened and endangered species that are in the undeveloped areas and open space. On page 21, we are still checking the Highlands’ numbers if they are correct regarding open space. You don’t have any carbonate rock areas to worry about. There is a data on the net water availability based on the Highlands Model of what their considering the parameters of water availability, which I think there are very few communities that have any surplus there. We, of course, put a note in saying that you have a lot of availability in your water system than the actual capacity. Based upon your use, and the permanent capacity of the water system, you have excess. There is also a listing and analysis of the septic density. This Inventory is our document so we can add your side to the story. Also, there are some web links to the scientific work that they’ve done to come to these conclusions. All the maps are on digital form so when you are doing your Master Plan Re-examination and the Master Plan, we can share those for your use.
The Four Modules and the Initial Assessment are pretty much concluded and now we are going into the Master Plan Revision. They have a model of the Master Plan Revision, which we have started to work on. I am anticipating you are going to be working with Ken Albert on the Re-Examination Report. At that process, I am hoping to meet and coordinate with Ken to give him this data so that both of our efforts come together and you obtain a comprehensive amendment. I think the information we have here will make Ken’s job easier as well as his mapping easier. After we meet with the Highlands, I’ll set a meeting with Ken and make sure we’ve shared all this information with each other.
The next step is Highlands is writing their own zoning ordinances and codes. They have a pretty extensive land use ordinance, septic regulation ordinance, and wellhead protection ordinance. Because the State Legislature gave the Highlands authority in the preservation area, they are pretty much in the driver’s seat and, in the planning area, its optional.
We can make some tweaks and some amendments to these, but your Planning Board attorney is going to be primarily looking through this and I’ll be working with him to try and modify them where possible with the Highlands so that the ordinances won’t have a severe impact. I went to the informational session that they held on the ordinances. A few of the land use attorneys there complained about the Highlands writing all these ordinances and not reviewing them and not sending them to the committees. It seems because of time constraints, they assigned a couple of staff people to write zoning ordinances or land use ordinances for 88 towns in 45 days and this is the product.
Atty Veltri: I’ve looked at the ordinance package from a cursory point of view and there is a proposal before the Mayor & Council, so before I really jump into it, I want to be authorized to actually work on it.
Tom Carroll: I would like to talk after the meeting so that we can make sure we are all on the same page. I did provide copies to Mr. Graceffo and Mr. Rucci who sat on the committee and we will get that process going now.
As I mentioned, we will be meeting with Eileen Swan, the Executive Director of Highlands, in the next couple of weeks to hopefully firm up everything to get to their December date. I would anticipate that we will be back here at the November Planning Board Meeting with a report as to what happened at that meeting, whether or not there is any action that the Planning Board needs to take at that point, then bring it to the Mayor & Council at their December Meeting to submit the Petition for Highlands Certification. We will then continue to work on the ordinances and putting everything else into place. By submitting the Petition, it doesn’t mean that we are done because I am sure they are going to come back with some questions. However, it has been a very open conversation between Highlands and the community so that I don’t think we are going to get blind-sided like we do with COAH.
There are two things that I just want to point out. As Bob said, right now we are sitting in the lake community sub-zone. What they did was, any property within 1,000 feet of a body of water, they made into a lake community, and not realizing it is the reservoir. We are going to look to get that put into the existing community zone, which would allow for a little bit more flexibility in development and redevelopment. The other thing I just wanted to mention is originally we had a December 9th date that our COAH Plan had to be submitted, but that has been pushed back to June of 2010. We did have a meeting a few weeks ago with some Members of the Planning Board. Art Bernard is starting to work on putting his report together; however, we need to firm up the build-out analysis numbers so that Highlands is comfortable with those so that when we take it to COAH, Highlands will be on our side in defending the numbers.
Vice Chairman Graceffo: At this point, do you believe you’re more prone to accept the Highlands Preservation Act as part of the town, rather than contrast it?
Tom Carroll: We put a lot of work in ten/eleven years ago for the Town Center Designation and that expired in 2008. There were two routes of going for Town Center. One of which was going through the Smart Growth Process, which was long, complicated and expensive, or going through the Highlands Process. From what I’ve seen so far, and given where we are in development in that most of the planning area is developed, there is very little if any negative effect of adopting the Highlands Regulations for the entire community. That is the route we are looking at because, as part of our Petition, we get the Town Center Designation back for the Haskell section of town. Right now I see no negatives, but will confirm this with Eileen Swan and Bob.
Vice Chairman Graceffo: Along Ringwood Avenue, even with the Highlands Act, we would still be able to do some re-development in that area and that would be the plus side without any further build-out? Tom responded yes because Highlands, as a rule, allows for the 125% lot coverage.
Vice Chairman Graceffo: Which means, if there is a building combination apartment and store front, you may be able to re-develop that into something 1.25 larger? Tom responded yes and that is impervious surface so that includes all the parking lots, garages or anything else that is there.
Bob Tessier: The key is that impervious area and expanding that.
Vice Chairman Graceffo: If it is a grassland or field, you have a problem with it? Tom responded yes. If you have a garage with a huge driveway you can petition to redevelop it? Tom responded yes.
The model sent to us of the land ordinances, which the state put out, doesn’t fit all of our needs. We will need a final document and a lot needs to be looked at to see what remains, what gets pulled out, what gets modified.
Bob Tessier: Yes. That is in Module 7.
Tom Carroll: That is where we are going to now. I think one of the questions that comes to mind is there are items in the model ordinances that have no applicability to the Borough of Wanaque where they might apply to a town in Sussex County. Are they going to require us to adopt those any way or do we make an argument not to adopt them? I don’t have an answer to that.
Bob Tessier: I think they are realizing the blanket approach doesn’t work, so I am hoping that they will look at that we do have a wellhead ordinance, we don’t need the carbonate rock ordinance because we don’t have any of that situation. This is to be determined. What you have a copy of is simply what they provided us with. I have looked at and reviewed it, but I have not made any comments or marked it up. This is going to be the task ahead of us along with the Master Plan.
Member DiMeglio: With all this information you gave us, we have an engineer that we hired in the beginning in the year, can’t our engineer do all this? Maybe save us some money. Didn’t we authorize Alaimo Engineering to work on the Master Plan? Do we have to approve tonight the $14,000 for re-examination report?
Tom Carroll: Actually, I spoke with Chairman Foulon several weeks ago along with Steve and, at his direction, we authorized that to more forward.
Member DiMeglio: Where are you getting the $14,000?
Tom Carroll: That money I had budgeted. As far as the Master Plan, it has to go through a full funding situation so the Planning Board, if they authorized anyone, did not have the authority because the funding wasn’t there. The re-examination report money is in the budget, but the Master Plan goes through a special emergency appropriation where we pay it out over five years. I have to go through an RFP process for it and take it from there.
Atty Veltri: Let me try to clarify where my concerns are as the Board Attorney. At the very beginning of the year, one of the things we wanted to tackle this year was re-examining the Master Plan. We have that duty and obligation every six years and that is one of the things we said we were going to do this year and we need to do. It is unusual in that we have a “couple of balls in the air” at the same time. We have the Highlands Proposal, which we are trying to meet, and the Mayor & Council hired some special people to tackle that, and then we had a couple of meetings where we thought we hired engineers and planners to work on the Master Plan. At one meeting we found out that maybe they were working on the same things. At the end of that meeting, I think it was decided that our engineer planner was not going to move forward with reviewing the Master Plan and that the people that the Mayor & Council hired were going to tackle the Highlands and the COAH issues that are before us.
When I attended the recent meeting on the Highlands update, my mind was triggered as to where is our Board’s goal in terms of re-examining the Plan. Is that going to be done by December 31st or are we going to face a possible issue in the future having not re-examined during 2009? I asked that question at the meeting. The answer was it probably is a good idea to re-examine in 2009 and the question was who is going to do it? Mr. Albert was at that meeting. He suggested that, because he was working on the Highlands and also had information with the COAH issues, he could probably do the re-examination within the three months that we have left. That is where this proposal on the table comes from. I agree that there was massive confusion as to who was going to work on this and why, but through all the confusion, my only goal is can we re-examine effectively by the end of December, 2009. My recommendation to the Board is that we should file the paperwork that we need to file statutorily. Who does it and how much we pay, those are not issues that I get involved with. I want to keep getting us back to where we started in January, are we going to re-examine and can we meet our goal to do it by the end of the year? Mr. Albert’s name was the name that was suggested as the guy who could do it and has the information available at this time to make it happen by the end of December. That is why it is on the agenda, but I do agree with you that there was a lot of confusion and a lot of people that we thought were doing the task that ended up not doing it for a variety of reasons. Right now, we have the Mayor & Council doing things with Highlands, the Board trying to do our functions and some of them cross. If we hired someone to do it, and they’ve already hired someone who has done, it does not make sense to pay two people to do the same thing. I hope this clarifies it.
Tom Carroll: In doing the Re-examination Report, the Planner is going to be pulling a lot of the information from Highlands and COAH in order to “give us something that is bullet proof”. A straight generic Re-examination Report is not going to cover all of the bases given the fact we are in this Highlands transition time also. It will also give the Planning Board a running start for doing the full Master Plan, which we hope can get done next year. The Highlands regulations are going to drive what we can and cannot do in the Master Plan so we need to get the Highlands finished, get approval and then the Planning Board can do a full-blown Master Plan, which we haven’t done in twenty years. In the meantime, we are able to sit comfortably with the Re-examination Report that meets the requirements of the statute but goes beyond it and also covers us for the transition time that we are in right now.
Atty Veltri: I think there might be more confusion because next year we are going to sit here in May and say “what did we do in December?” We are re-examining because we have a statutory obligation to re-examine within a six-year period, which ends on December 31st. In May, the Master Plan will probably be amended, changed and overhauled but hopefully a lot of what we are doing now will be part and parcel of what is done in May. Unfortunately, we have the six-year obligation that ends in December. We want to meet that obligation, and then we are going to do more work to overhaul the entire thing by the middle of next year.
Tom Carroll: I hope it is May or June of 2010. It may be May or June of 2011 depending on how fast Highlands goes.
Vice Chairman Graceffo: Tom, do you also want to say something about the Union Court development status?
Tom Carroll: I just wanted to mention that Mr. Benecke will be presenting to the Council at the November 9th Council Meeting an ordinance for designating certain properties on Union Court as an area in need of re-development. He will be here at the November 19th meeting to present it to the Planning Board. We had talked about the four or five properties along Union Court, putting them in a re-development area in order to attract a commercial development there; either another hotel, restaurant, or some other business service that would be beneficial for the highway.
Vice Chairman Graceffo: Thank you very much gentlemen.
PUBLIC DISCUSSION:
MOTION TO OPEN PUBLIC PORTION: made by Member Shutte, seconded by Member Slater, voting yes were Vice Chairman Graceffo, Members DiMeglio, Mahler, Platt, Slater, O’Connell and Shutte.
Sandy Lawson, 28 Haskell Avenue, came forward. She stated the information she heard tonight was interesting and good. Asked about the reports submitted/mentioned tonight and Mr. Tessier advised that the Initial Assessment and Build-Out Analysis are available on New Jersey Highlands Council website. The Resource Inventory is a draft and they haven’t received that document yet. She is interested in the Resource Inventory, which could make a great addition to the Open Space Plan.
Does the Union Court re-development include all of those properties? Tom Carroll advised yes. She is concerned about traffic and exiting from Haskell and Greenwood Avenues, especially with Burger King and the hotel.
MOTION TO CLOSE PUBLIC PORTION: made by Member Slater, seconded by Member DiMeglio, voting yes were Vice Chairman Graceffo, Members DiMeglio, Mahler, Platt, Slater, O’Connell and Shutte.
RESOLUTIONS: None
VOUCHERS: None, other than Agreement for Re-examination by Ken Albert for $14,000, which needs to be approved and signed based upon what was mentioned in the earlier part of this meeting.
MOTION TO APPROVE: made Member Slater, seconded by Member Mahler, voting yes were Vice Chairman Graceffo, Members DiMeglio, Mahler, Platt, Slater, O’Connell and Shutte.
NEW BUSINESS:
Member John DiMeglio presented the Board with his Resignation Letter. This will be his last meeting. Vice Chairman Graceffo, on behalf of the Board, regrettably accepted his resignation.
MOTION TO ADJOURN AT 8:58 P.M.: made by Member Slater, carried by a voice vote.
______________________________
Jennifer A. Fiorito
Planning Board Secretary