##VIDEO ID:05AHmL25tbk## [Music] everybody this meeting is called to order in accordance with the open public meetings act notice of this meeting was provided to the home News Tribune Star Ledger and Highland Park planet on January 23rd 2024 and was posted on the burrow website at www.hpborrow.com and on the bulletin board at Burrow Hall 221 South fth Avenue Highland Park New Jersey and has remained continuously posted as required by law fire exits are to the left and right of when you are speaking please remember to speak into the microphone this is the Highland Park planning board reorganization meeting and I'm going to turn it over to our Council Roger th uh before we end up doing the roll call we need to swear in some people that includes Ellen Scott uh Allan and so if you all stand please and repeat after for me I and then state your name Solly swear or affirm swe that I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties the office a planning board member according to the best of my ability to the best of my ability I do further solemly swear or affirm I do further swear orir that I will support the Constitution of the United States support of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and theit St that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same to the governments established in the United States and in this state govern EST the United States St under the authority of people what I'm going to do is pass these out uh if you'll each sign them and then send them back okay with that Jenn you be kind enough to do the roll call please yeah Mr brusher here Mr Chin here mzy here Mr H here MRIs Mr mle Mr Perman Mr Stern Cardel Mr Williams okay these are not the hard questions uh we do have the minutes we going to put those off to the end end of the U reorganization uh the first order of business with regard to the reorganization excuse me uh is the nomination for the chair for the year 2000 excuse me 25 of the planning board of The Bu of Highland Park is there a nomination for that position Nom Rebeca okay are there any other nominations hearing none the nomin oh no I agree let the record reflect that agrees okay U hearing know other the nominations if you can have a roll call please J Mr Brer yes Mr Chin yes that H yes Mr ha absolutely Williams yes and Miss yes and thank you all again for your nomination I always really appreciate it all right chair your meeting thank you so much so we'll just continue on with the selection of officers next up is our vice chairperson and I will say that although Patrick is not here with us this evening I think he served in that capacity for a couple of years now and has done just fine in that role so I would nominate pedri M for vice chair person second take a roll call vote on that Mr brusher yes Mr Chin yesy yes Mr Hil yes Mr Williams yes yes pedrick you've been nominated in exension good job um next up we have our secretary for our board and again I'd like to put forth the nomination for Alan Williams who continues to do a fantastic job in that role for us previously all right can we get a roll call on that Mr Brer yes Mr Chin yesy yes Mr ha yes William yes all right next up we have our slate of appointment of professionals and staff can we do this all together you can if you choose all right we've been working with Roger Thomas of Dolan and Dolan as our board attorney and Chris Penza of Looney Rick's kiss as our Pro planner and of course we have Bruce cotch from CME Associates as our engineer and uh Moren is not with us anymore so Jen I assume I'm going to be able to n no who's who's GNA be our clerk she's gonna be the just it oh okay well then well Moren is still our uh nominate we can still nominate Moren as our board clerk with genen serving Pro for now if that's all right we can nominate that as the Slate of our board Professionals for 2025 I'll second that take a call Mr prer yes Mr Chin yesy yes Mr ha yes Mr Williams yes hand yes thank you and thank you all our professionals and the great work we do we we do very much appreciate it all right before we get into the next step of setting our 20125 meeting dates and the 2025 official newspaper selection Uh something's been bubbling in the background um as all the board members know we're very we're a board that's very uh in favor of public involvement and public comment and doing what we can to involve members of the public in our proceedings so there been various requests to see if we can open up our board meetings to participation by the public by Zoom which is a wonderful advancement in technology that we would love to embrace but we do have some limitations both in our rules and in our procedures that affect that and that's we as a board hear a few types of applications when people come before us basically three different types open public comments where people can come in and comment on basically anything that is on their mind during our open public sessions we have commentary on things that are referred to the board by Town Council such as um ordinances or modifications to the master plan or are similar types of uh subjects for our general review and consideration and then we have a third type which are applications for hearings before the board for types one and two for public com commentary and for commentary on matters referred to our board for compliance with the master plan or on the master plan itself we don't take testimony when we discuss those matters so we're not creating a legal record for the benefit of somewhere someone else we're creating a record for the benefit of anyone who is listening in participating in the township providing their feedback to us as a board so when we hold a hearing for an applicant who is bringing an application for the board we are serving the judicial role in that capacity we take testimony we examine evidence and the applicant has the right to cross-examine anyone who gives testimony either in support or in opposition to their application and because of that having the public provide input on hearings by Zoom creates a challenge in that it affects the rights of the applicants and how they present their application because remember everything we do here is also subject to review in Superior Court and all the courts above so we have to be very careful in how we preserve the rights of the applicants and the record that's presented before us and the rights of the public as well and the rights of the public as well so in consultation with our attorney the recommendation has been that yes we can open up our meetings to public commentary on the first two items which are again just general public commentary on non-agenda items and public comment AR on referrals to us that are non- hearing non testimony based matters but on the third type of matter just as we require all our applicants to come in person to provide their testimony and their evidence and their experts and create their record which is also in section 6.05 of our rules of conduct anyone who wants to provide opposition or even support for those applications has to similarly appear so that the applicant can preserve their right to cross-exam and make a proper record of the hearing so it's a little bit confusing it's a little bit back and forth but it does allow us to somewhat open up our meetings to public comments without causing issues or infringing on the rights of applicants and the public on the hearing portions when those come before us so did I get all that right you did in fact yes question when someone is participating in the meeting via Zoom or in person for the public comment portion of our meetings that are non testimony do they still have to State their address uh yes it's preferable uh because basically what you're looking for is comments and you want to know where those comments are from are they from residents uh and therefore the address is important or they're from non-residents and and sometimes that makes a difference in terms of what they're saying who's saying it so yeah I do think it's important to end up having the name of the address okay another question to follow that does it matter whether um the person if someone s address is that does does it matter whether the person uh owns the property at that address or speciically occupies residentially doesn't matter the address is the address U and one other followup to that for someone to make a public commentary do they have to be a resident of the b or can people make public comments that like maybe work in the area or just you know are just got nothing better to do on a on a Thursday night okay so I believe in general we don't require a modification to our proposed rules because nothing in the rules prohibit us from allowing public comment by Zoom as long as it's not on a matter of testimony and hearing our rules do require that testimony and hearing be made in person so I don't think we need to modify our proposed rules but I'm putting all this on the table to say for notice purposes so people know what rights have at our meetings we do need to modify our notice requirements which our council is going to work on from the feedback of the board and what we decide to do here I agree and I think that just for purposes of uh Assurance I will look at the rules to see if there's anything that needs to be tweaked tweaked excuse me I'm using my voice actually I'm gaining my voice to be honest with you the holiday not great yeah so we had a little discussion about the procedures for were public comment and um procedures in the in in the council meetings have changed so at one point the council and the public would go back and forth in the middle of the meeting our new procedures are there's a public comment period the public comments and then the public comment period is closed and then the board and the mayor decide who wants to if they want to respond so I'm I have we is this should we come up with those rules as well for how public comment Works via Zoom I tend to think I my personal opinion is that if you end up having uh comments at the end of the meeting um uh it is usually better to end up dealing with them uh as a group and then if board members wish to respond at the end they can respond because I do tend to think that what ends up happening is that if you start responding to individual comments then you should potentially get into what I think the council was concerned about is a a dialogue and then that dialogue gets into a debate and then that debate gets into an argument so you don't really necessarily want to have that happen U and I don't think it's appropriate to have it happen here so that's my opinion but it's it's your board so that's you can do it as you choose so I I I would agree with that I think that the the procedures that are working at the council where there's public comment closed public comment and then response by the board seems to be streamlining meetings seems to be having actually more questions answered than going back and forth in a debate format and I think it it seems to be working pretty well and I would argue and recommend that I think we ought to do the same here I also think there's a benefit to having the same policy across the various boards and Council so members of the public know what to expect so I I am also in agreement that I think that is a way to properly handle it now in full disclosure our board rarely gets a multitude of commentary at our meetings whether online or or what have you but when we did have some uh ordinances that were controversial I think that is how we handled it we let members of the public speak and then at the end after they were finished we had responsive commentary during covid and I think that process didn't work um so unless there's other objections or viewpoints it seems like a rational and reasonable way to approach things I would agree okay so with that as far as our 2025 meeting schedule knowing that we need to modify our notice provision that's at the top of the schedule does anyone have any comments on the dates themselves if you would like you could also include in that uh well um the um newspapers I know that there are going to be changes as many of you know The Ledger is no longer going to be publish in a newspaper as of sometime in February much to my Su because I still get it delivered uh but the fact of the matter is um you can do both if you choose in a single motion uh what would be the second uh it would be uh the motion would be the approval of the uh two 2 it says 24 but 2025 meeting dates and the designation of the official oh yes as you said th those changes are coming there's uh ongoing updates in the legislature about how to handle newspapers that are no longer going to be printing physical media it's an ongoing process for right now we can still select the Star Ledger as our board newspaper even if they're discontinuing physical prints we may have to revisit that in March unless there's further extensions on that legislation questions comments concerns right that I'll solicit a motion to approve the dates and the selection of the Star lger as our official newspaper home news and home news and tribune news move second and you don't need a roll call you can do a voice vote all in favor I all opposed any extensions motion passes very good all right that takes us to the rules uh adoption of the Rules of Order Roger should we put this off why don't you put it off until the February meeting and that way I can take a quick look I don't I tend to agree with the chair uh that there's probably not going to be a need for change but just in case I'll look at it very quickly and get back to Rebecca uh and then we have that again on the agenda for the February meeting great all right so we are going to put off adopting our Rules of Order while our Council takes a chance to look at it and in light of our new policies that we're looking to implement to be more inclusive to the public on portions of our meeting all right so with that let's Circle back around to the October 10th 2024 meeting minutes and any comments there too and CRA I'm already ahead of you we know we've got your name spilled WR only I make there any other comments to the meeting October 10 yes on page four um first paragraph I'm not sure if uh the second line it says previous use condition uh would be pre-existing non-conforming use condition which paragraph uh page four the first paragraph I haven't looked at the uh at the video recording I was curious about that a pre-existing non-conforming use condition yes I would I would would agree with that I think that is to be a pre-existing nonconforming use condition anything else uh yeah immediately following paragraph I believe uh that should be instead of U overlay Zone stream overlay Zone okay and and then uh about Midway down the page uh paragraph that begins Mr iser said I'm more comfortable um I believe uh when the when he said so now the theme of math not the 2016 the 20 map uh you need to indicate that that was a theoretical hypothetical map and not some map that actually exists well your point is well taken that 2028 map would not exist now in case someone's reading this and but looking for a map he said there was a map uh we could we change the reference to say but um a future 2028 math sure that makes sense and then uh the paragraph imately following uh just plane is the other type of plane ah yes and those are all of my comments so is that your motion to approve the minutes as modified as you suggest I'd like to hear if anyone else has anything first Rogers anxious for us to be done anyone else have any comments all right then can is there a motion to approve the minutes subject to correcting the spelling of kitch's name and the modifications proposed by Alber so second second roll call vote Please Mr brusher Mr brusher you pay attention please yes mrzy yes Mr H yes Williams yes Miss yes thank you all right and with that we have not noticed the Public's ability to join us via Zoom for this meeting so I'm not going to do it at this meeting but hopefully for future meetings we will at this point open it up by Zoom so for today I'm going to open up the meeting to public comment for any items not on the agenda but seeing no members of the public present I will close the meeting do members of the board have any further comments observations questions about what's going on in the world if we have zoom and people here who goes first I think the members of the public were present we have the opportunity to speak first I have a question uh is the bur uh exploring acquisition of any properties in the immediate vicinity of pen stock or the municipal parking lot if that not something that disos on in public not have answer um uh not that I can speak I I don't I believe that we there yet okay anything interesting happening so there are these little numbers on the curves and I'm wondering if those were left over from the street fair or are they like areas where maybe like parking meters might go someone asked me that question recently they left over from the street that's what I thought okay nice being able to interrogate Council some like no waiting in line here parking spots and I was like I I think those are left over from the street there but I will ask definitely left over got anything interesting to share no we been a little slow through the holiday season all right all right with that I think I'll solicit a motion to adjourn anyone Some Mo second second all in favor I thank you everybody always appreciated thank you