TUF - Important Planning Board Meeting

Important Planning Board Meeting
8/19/08

There will be an especially important meeting of the Planning Board on Wed Aug 20th, 2008. The Board will discuss several building sights regarding their impact on the Township's Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) obligation and the percentage of age restricted homes in these developments.

The schedule is:

A) 6:30pm - Ladurée at Somerset
B) 7:00pm - Kings Row/Janho
C) 7:30pm - Mettlers/ Schoolhouse (A.K.A. Pillars of Fire)
D) 8:00pm - Marcy Street Project (E&J Equities)
E) 8:30pm - Kings Row
F) 9:00pm - Summerfields

Because of the down turn in the housing market many builders are finding it difficult to sell homes. Clearly having fewer restrictions on their clientele would make it easier to sell the homes. Age restricted homes (occupants must be over 55) are an advantage to the Township because they do not add more children to our schools. 62% of our property taxes go to the Board of education. The average cost per child is $12,000 per year. Estimates range from for every two to five new homes we put another child in school. This translates to the taxes on new homes that allow children after subtracting Municipal, Country and other taxes do not pay enough in taxes to educate the child they bring into the system. Who pays? You do.

It is however much more complicated then that. We have certain COAH obligations under the law. While some would argue that there have been too many zoning changes and variances allowed, the Planning and Zoning Boards have done a good job of keeping up with our COAH obligations. An exact estimate is impossible but it is believed that this round of COAH only requires the Township build an additional 150 COAH homes beyond those already planned. To put this in perspective we feared that we would have to meet the cap of 1000 additional affordable homes. 150 is a relatively easy amount to makeup.

We still have to make up those 150 homes plus a few more homes as a buffer. The "Pillars of Fire" development near Canal Walk, often referred to as Canal Walk 2, is a good example of the double edged sword of altering a project. The following information is what my sources have told me and may possibly not be exact, but will give an idea of the issues. It is already late and I want to get this out prior to the needing so I have not double checked the details.

This development includes 900 homes, a large portion of these (if not all) are age restricted. I have been told that they will be asking to build 150 of those houses as age unrestricted. CON - This of course means more children in our schools. PRO - By their offering to build all 150 of those houses as COAH this may complete all of our remaining COAH obligations for the next ten years in one project. Some will argue that it is an advantage to put all of our COAH housing in one place. Others will argue that that smacks of segregation (which is exactly what COAH was initially designed to alleviate).

What I am not sure of is if the current project meets its current COAH obligation. At the time that site was planned the COAH requirement was 1 out of every 8 homes must be "affordable" (12.5%). It has now increased to 1 out of every 5 homes (20%). Thus this project as currently planned may be part of our 150 home deficit. Just for the purposes of discussion, if this project was planned at say 15% then there would be 135 COAH units planned. This would be 45 units short of what its new COAH obligation would be. If these numbers are correct, I would suggest that they change 45 of the age restricted units to COAH age restricted units and then allow them to convert, perhaps, 115 age restricted non-COAH units to non-age restricted COAH units, keeping the entire project at 900 homes. This would allow them some flexibility, cause a smaller impact on the town than what they have asked for and completely fill all our COAH obligations.

I know some people are saying "scrapped the entire project". If we had Aladdin's Lamp that would be the thing to do but unfortunately Council, in one of its worst "bi-partisan" moves in the past 5 years, passed an ordinance allowing this zoning change. They did this without letting the planning board who was likely leaning against this change, to give its opinion. Rewriting that ordinance now would likely cause significant legal consequences. This is extremely unfortunate because this land was zoned for manufacturing that would allow warehouse and office buildings in a secluded part of the town near the highway.

Ladurée at Somerset is another project that demonstrates the complexities. In this project they have already cleared the land so saving habitat is not an issue. There have been several articles in the paper that indicate that building has stopped and calls to the sales office go unanswered. Again one might wish that the development will not happen however if that developments was building COAH homes in excess of its obligation then we would have to make up those homes and another place. One also must consider that before the variance was approved for this development it was zoned as R-20 and could potentially have placed far more children in our schools than the current project or even after what will be requested tomorrow night. Also be aware that in two years COAH will investigate our progress and if projects are not being built they may ask for changes.

Thus we see in these two examples that simply playing pure hard ball and saying no so that they can't build projects may actually be a detriment and cost us more money. I do hope that the Planning Board plays TUF (pun intended) but I believe they should keep up the work that they have been doing in the past and require an excess of affordable houses (22%) and investigate if lower densities can be applied.

Phil Kramer