To the flag of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Good evening. Call to order the Barl Save Planning Board.
Beth, has this meeting been advertised in accordance with the Open Public Meeting Act? Yes, Chairman, it has. Have a roll call, please. Mr. Candell, here. Miss Lman, here. Mr. Mueller, Mr. Shaw, here. Mr. Sataka, Mr. Veosen, Mr. Williams, here.
Council Councilman Zabowski here. Chairman Ty here. We have a quorum. Memorization of resolutions. Uh tonight we have CPMD Journey Mill Road Urban Renewal LLC Journey Mill Road in South
River Saraveville block 58 lots 2.01 and 9 application number PB number 25-02 pleasure board make a motion motion I have a second second
roll call Mr. Candell. Yes. Miss Larman. Stain. Mr. Shaw. Yes. Miss Sataka. Yes. Mr. Williams. Yes. Councilman Zabrowski. Yes. Chairman Tai. Yes. Thank you. Uh
uh next we'll do the adopting of the housing element after the presentation. We have the minutes. Accept the minutes from last meeting. That would be May uh 7th and May 21st. Can I have a motion? Motion. I have a second. Second. All in favor?
I opposed. Thank you. Uh communication agenda. None this evening. Uh the site plan sub subdivision that's being uh held over. Uh this evening we had application
number PB25-01 Tenon Auto Service Inc. Prelim P preliminary and final site plan 2069 Highway 35 South Amboy block 428 lots 12 2.01
being out for the notice to July 5th. Yep. I received a letter with their consideration um to be heard on July 16th, 2025 with no further notice. Can we get a motion to accept that
motion? Second. All in favor I. All right. Next on the agenda um this evening we have a housing plan element and fair share bureau of cerevil fourth round 2025 prepared by Acuity Consulting
Services. Yep. I'm just going to um pull that up for you. Uh here. Everybody also has a copy of that in front of them. All right. Should I would you like me to I can dive right into the presentation if you'd like? All right, perfect. Um
well, good evening everyone. So, um yeah, just a relatively brief presentation and then um you know, of course, be happy to answer any questions uh even throughout the presentation or or afterward. Um definitely feel free to jump in. Um what we've done uh is prepared the fourth round housing plan
element and fair share plan. And what I'll do uh the first slide um next slide please. Thank you. Um, essentially, uh, I think everyone here is probably familiar with with what the document is, but just real quick as a as a a
refresher, let's say, um, it's housing plan element and fair share plan. The, uh, housing plan element component, um, stems mainly from the municipal land use law. And so as one of the elements of the master plan um it's under the the purview of the planning board um to to
consider that that aspect of the document and really the document as a whole of course as well. But um that's really the the lineage of of that. And then um for the fair share plan which is essentially the second half of the document that uh stems mainly from the fair housing act. And um the two
documents essentially the first uh housing plan element portion really just summarizes demographics and really basic information about the the burough's uh housing stock, employment, other other data. And um in addition, we have a a vacant land adjustment analysis that
we've summarized within the housing plan portion, which I'll provide a little bit more information about in a moment. And uh the fair share plan portion has more of the the actual tables where it crunches the numbers, looks at crediting analysis, how you're addressing your obligations, and also um discusses some
ordinances and refers to some of the appendices which are ordinances um to an extent at this point. We have and I'll give you a little uh overview of the process in a moment. Um the second portion of the process or the next portion over the next um eight or nine months or so would be involving more of the ordinances and things like that. The
only reason I mention that is after this hearing, assumed that it's received favorably and approved, uh it goes to the governing body to be endorsed. And one of the main reasons it goes to the governing body is because of the ordinances that are referred to and and included in the document. And um of course, we're doing this um based upon a
state requirement and um helps um maintain the bureau's immunity from builder's remedy lawsuits, which is the second bullet uh bullet point there. The burrow is of course um you know that you have a uh an adopted plan in place from the third round at this point. Protections are in place. This helps ensure the continuation of those
protections. U next slide please. And so what has changed? Um make sure we're on the same that's perfect. Um no no it's all good. Um so uh what what has changed? I'll just provide an overview of the process. Um, essentially, you know, for the for the
fourth round, um, back in March of last year, the state released updates to the Fair Housing Act, and once those were implemented, it had a series of deadlines. And at this point, what we've already been through is uh, in October, the state released its obligations. And
what they were um, essentially doing at that point is is uh, calculating different factors based on land capacity, employment, um, other factors as well. calculated obligations for every town in in the state and uh released those. And the the legislation
was written that by January 31st, each municipality had to adopt a resolution that would essentially either acknowledge or accept those those obligations or that would seek to modify them in some way or contest them. And so what we did is, you know, we took a look
at those at those obligations uh for the the new construction obligation was 270 units and we did a land capacity analysis. We did find that the state had overestimated the land capacity in the in the burrow. So we put a um let's say
a competing uh estimate uh calculation essentially that um you know we put that forward and proposed that to the to the state fair share housing center kind of got wind of it and intervened and um it began a negotiation process and where we settled is we started with 270 we
proposed 210 and then we settled at 240. And so that's one of the documents that's appended to the uh to the housing element is basically the those documents showing how um it came to be that the uh the obligation was 240. Now with that um actually let me I'll just finish the um
I'm going to talk about the vacant land adjustment in a moment which is another important piece of that because it's actually been reduced further. Um but just to round out the uh process explanation um so we did you know make that January 31st deadline that's in place. The next major deadline is June
30th and um by June 30th we have to adopt um the housing plan element and fair share plan at the planning board within 48 hours of that adoption. It has to be filed with the court which would be done um you know on online electronically and then following that
um the governing body has to endorse the plan that may either be in June or July at this point. I think we're we're on track for July which is completely fine. And then um from a or from uh July 1st through August 31st, there's a 60-day period where developers or interested
parties can voice uh a concern or an objection. And that's statewide. You know, every municipality has that same time period. as of uh August 31st, the time period closes. And then um what we're anticipating if there's no objections is the timeline would just continue and we would have until March
of 2026 to prepare um ordinances that would basically be um once they're adopted, they'd be appended to the housing plan element and fair share plan. And those could be, for example, um there's a couple new sites proposed. They there might be an overlay zone, you know, for one of the sites. Um they could there could be almost certainly uh
will be um updates to the existing affordable housing ordinance because you the unifi uniform housing affordability controls are just about to be uh comprehensively updated and then they're updating some other regulations as well. Um so basically um I don't expect anything to be um you know like
groundbreaking in terms of the difference of what we already have on the books but there'll be some details we'll have to amend and and things like that. So I'll definitely keep everybody updated um as far as that goes. And then beyond that, it's just kind of the operations, you know, the continuation phase of the next uh the next 10 years is essentially what this housing um
element um covers uh through 2035. And next slide, please. And I'm sorry, one more slide. And so the vacant land adjustment. So, uh, where we landed with 240 units for the fourth round obligation, um, what
we're able to do is, uh, take a look at the land capacity. And this is very confusing. It even took me and other planners a little while to, uh, wrap our minds around it. So, what we did before is a vacant land capacity analysis. And that's the way it's worded in in the legislation. Um, as far as that variable
goes. A vacant land adjustment is something a little bit different. um although it's really similar, but basically what we did is we're allowed in the regulations once the obligation is assigned. So it's been assigned at 240, we're allowed to look at all the vacant land in the burrow and basically
screen it to see if it's suitable uh to have affordable housing constructed on it. And I don't want to bore you with the details, but essentially we'll look at minimum lot size. Uh 83 acres is the minimum parcel size. So anything below that gets eliminated automatically. You
can eliminate any sites with environmental constraints such as wetlands, um flood hazard area, steep slopes, um things like that. Certain cases, properties might be deed restricted, um due to contamination, um you know, those can be eliminated if there's deed restrictions due to open
space or historic resources. Those are ways you can eliminate sites as well. And essentially what we did is when we went through, we were able to demonstrate that there's only enough property that's vacant and that meets all these criteria for 76 affordable housing units. And so essentially, we
brought it from 240 down to 76 as far as um the projects that you have to plan for today. And that's called the uh realistic development potential. Um shown on the slide as the RDP and doesn't mean that the rest of that goes away. there's, you know, if you subtract
76 from 240, you get 164. So there's 164 units kind of unaccounted for. That's called the unmet need. And that you can address simply through adopting general ordinances. So one of the ordinances I think we're probably going to be asked to to adopt, we haven't really proposed
it in here at this point, is a municipal a municipalitywide uh set aside ordinance. And what that is is any development of five or more units would be expected to have a 20% set aside. And that's not necessarily the only way to do that. You could propose individual
overlay zones and um kind of make the case for that instead of that municipalitywide ordinance. These are just common common um requests by the court essentially as far as uh solutions to this. But the bottom line is for the other 164 units, you can just do overlay zoning and other general solutions like
that. you don't actually have to come up with a sightsp specific plan to address those. Um, and what we did in this plan for the 76 units is we identified some sites that we think um are suitable for for zoning and um you know basically I'll provide a little bit more detail on
that as we go. And I think the next slide might be a map and I apologize for the resolution. It's a it's a burrowwide map. So, it's really uh really, you know, lacking in terms of being able to zoom in and out um in the presentation. But just real quick to point out one
thing. So, this shows everything in red are the vacant properties. If you look near the the middle of the burrow, you can see a red line. It's kind of um almost like a C a C-shape. And that's just one example of, you know, the vacant lands tax data brought up what's
probably a right of way of, you know, rail or or street um something along those lines. Clearly not developable. There's really no way you're going to be able to uh develop something in that, you know, variance free essentially would be the standard. So um that's just one example of the type of property that
we would we would be able to eliminate right out of the gate. And then it's tough to see on here, but you know, as you'd expect as you're approaching buildout, the properties that are left vacant are the properties with the biggest problems in terms of wetlands and flood hazard area. So, it kind of makes the job a little easier at at this
point versus if there was a town with a lot of what that was nowhere near buildout, you'd have a lot more property to contend with. But, um, a lot of the the lowhanging fruit property has already been developed. So, we dropped properties with wetlands and uh stream stream corridors where you have a
repairarian buffer, flood hazard areas and and things like that. Um so, it's just a real real quick um real quick highlights on the uh vacant land adjustment map. And next slide, please. Yep. And perfect. Um so, prior round
compliance. So, you have uh housing plan element and fair share plan already on the books. And what we did in this case is is we tried to stick as closely as we could to that um just because it's already been recognized by the court as valid through a settlement agreement. Um
it's been time- tested. It's been on the books for a while and it's still it's stood the test of time. So we we like whenever we can to rely on those just because it's it's um you know it's already been proven. And um not to mention that many of your sites have been constructed which is great. Still
have a few pending but that's that's okay. That's um pretty typical. And so basically in your prior round compliance um we have a uh obligation of uh 261 and um what's been applied are age restricted units from Lake View at
Serville 65 units. Uh there's a 25% cap on uh applying age restricted units. So in other words, you can't apply more than you can't have more than 25% of that 261 be age restricted or senior units. So that's why that was limited there. Um so those the rest of those units have been carried forward. Uh
Riverton um you have to have a certain number of family units and so that in this case there's 130 family units supplied and uh you have 66 bonus credits uh to round that out. You can get rental bonus credits for prior round and third round projects. Next slide please.
And so for third ground compliance and again we try to stick close to the existing plan and um what you have here are um some of the the uh carryover from Lake View at Seville um in terms of the family and some of
the age restricted units and then I'm not going to read you every project necessarily but an array of projects that were already in the third round plan and um what we did is we kind of reverified those um in terms of their their status as far as construction concerned and their um their eligibility
to make sure they got deed restricted and those types of things to make sure they're creditw worthy. And essentially you have 595 units of um of housing that's either in place or planned, 197 bonus credits and bonus credits. Um
I think I mentioned it for the prior round in both cases. It's also got a 25% limitation. So unfortunately you can't get more than 25% of your plan addressed using bonus credits, but we try to max it out wherever we can. Um, so in this case we've we've done that and it's a 785 unit third round obligation. There's
792 units here. So you have a bit of a surplus which is good. And next slide please. So for the fourth round um as I mentioned before that vacant land adjustment enabled us to get the realistic development potential um
obligation which is the lower number the 76 units and you can see that in the the lower right hand corner of this table. And essentially these are the projects that we you know in this case in the in the case of realistic development potential you have to get sight specific. And so what we did is uh um
there's some mapping in the housing element um that that shows these sites. So essentially um there were some commercial properties on the eastern side of town near um regional roadways. So we wanted to avoid creating any kind of traffic um issues uh you know through
this plan. Uh those were chosen. Um there's sites along Ernston Road right near Route 9. Um and the Rariston Street park and Ride um as well uh commercial properties adjacent to it as as well. Those were uh identified as potential
for zoning for um either an overlay or a change in existing zoning to permit uh multif family housing uh that would include a set aside for affordable housing. And so what we have uh for those sites and for all the sites that you see here is the number of units we
anticipate that those sites would generate as far as affordable units. Um so it's a total of 57 and uh bonus credits at this point. They're not constructed. We're claiming 19. The court is a new process for everybody. We're going to see if they'll
let us claim them at at this point. Um we're certainly going to make the the case to do that and they'll be fully credited once they're constructed. Um it's we've been able to do that in the past in the past round. So we'll uh we'll definitely give that a go in this round. And um total 76 units. And the one other project that I I guess there's
two other two others that I didn't mention. The uh MCO site is a is a site next to Kennedy Park. Um it's a substantial size. I I guess um you know uh and what we would would hope a yield might be from that is for example 22 age
restricted units as a set aside of a larger project. Um that's just, you know, at this point a um kind of on the same level as the zoning. It's it's not a uh conceptual plan that we've received or anything like that. It's it's really just um just an estimate uh based on the
u the regulations at this point. And last but not least, the special needs project up top. Um it's a really efficient way to address an obligation. So we've included at least one special needs project we put in for four units, but it's actually credited by the
bedroom. And so the uh example I I like to give with this is if if you have a a ranch uh home somewhere in town with four bedrooms, if we were to do a typical rental or for sale unit that was affordable, you'd get one credit. And if you were lucky enough to be near a train
station or it was an infill development, you might get a half a bonus credit. So your best case scenario is one and a half credits. If it's special needs, you get credited by the bedroom. So that same ranch house, you get four credits and you're allowed to get one full bonus credit per bedroom. So you get four
bonus credits for a total of eight credits versus one and a half. So it's incredibly efficient. Um there is typically a subsidy needed. So, what we would typically recommend is if there's a, you know, a home that's fallen into the burrow's hands due to foreclosure or
for another reason that's, you know, a great use of, uh, of that property, uh, is to convey it to typically nonprofits operate the um, the special needs facilities and they could be for autism, MS, different, you know, whole host of different things and you would have control over what, you know, who that nonprofit is and who's going to who's
going to reside uh, within that facility. But um and in other cases, if there's a small infill property that falls into the burrow's hands for whatever reason, um that's a that's also, you know, a great uh potential opportunity uh to work with a with a special needs operator uh to do that.
And um for each of these things, one of the things that we'll probably hear a little bit of feedback from the court on is the um a phasing schedule. But um theoretically at this point there is um the next 10 years really especially for these these sites that are zoned um to
see some results from these things um from what's proposed. Uh special needs it's 100% affordable housing project. We'll see we'll see if we can get that phased uh what kind of timeline they they may want. In some cases they like to see two years. Um in other cases it's been open-ended. So we will uh we'll get
some feedback on that and I'll I'll keep everybody updated. And I think I may have just uh one more slide here and then the last slide is a map just for reference. Um so uh final slide. Um the unmet need as I mentioned before it's 164 units. As you can see here we've
identified 64 but the other part of that that's not shown on on this slide. It is it's recognized in the housing element though is um your your general ordinances that you have on the books that would yield uh potentially more units o over time. But essentially the sites that you see here, Ernston Road
North and Raritton uh road park and ride again commercial sites that um might be suitable for redevelopment or some uh some renovation and some addition of of um some residential units. Uh Gillette is a um project. I believe it's Gillette
Towers and um they're looking to do another building and it says age restricted here. We put that in there as a placeholder. It could be special needs units. In fact, we probably would prefer that it's special needs um just because it'll provide a greater benefit to the burrow. And um also Lake View Extension,
that's a project that was proposed conceptually um next to the existing Lake View kind of between the buildings. Um we've uh taken a look at the conceptual plan. It's really, to my knowledge at least, that's still very much um just kind of theoretical at this point, something that that they
proposed. So um nevertheless though it's a site we can um we can identify it as potential credits um toward the unmet need and part of the reason we put it toward the unmet need is is because it's not um not as concrete like as some as some of the other the other sites. So um
and then you have Macco site some additional units that could potentially be yielded from that site as well. And um with all of this um you know we we would be hoping that something you know some units are generated by these areas but the plan is not set in stone it can
evolve you know if there's new sites that come online we eventually want to switch out a site um you know things like that there are um avenues to do that so this is just what's proposed at the beginning of the 10-year period and uh and I I think that's that's all I have be happy to take any questions you
have any questions? very thorough. Thank you. The council, right? So what the board will do is board is actually the one that adopts the housing
fair share plan and then eventually goes back to the council. They endorse it. Um and I think you know uh maybe should just open it up to the public just because it's technically a hearing.
Okay. And uh then the board can vote on it. Like to open up to the public. Make a motion. Second. Second. All in favor? Anybody from the public like to speak?
Anybody from the public like to speak? Hearing nobody, we'll take a motion to close the public. Motion to close. Second. Second. All in favor? Need a motion to accept the housing plan element of fair share plan?
I have a second. Second. All in favor? Okay. Mr. Kandell, yes. Miss Lman, yes. Mr. Shaw, yes. Miss Sataka, yes. Mr. Williams, yes. Councilman Zabrouski,
yes. But comment, too. I just want to thank Peter and our other professionals who were uh uh worked together very collaboratively to uh to come up with this plan. It's not easy. It's complicated. Um and I appreciate the
fact that you you made uh the process smooth for us. I think it's creative but definitely attainable uh and it doesn't create uh areas where simple areas where uh all of a sudden we're going to have large numbers of affordable housing. I think
the obligation uh is spread within mixed uses and other uses as well particularly high uh I think needed uses such such as the special needs. So I appreciate your efforts and yes and chairman Tai thank you.
Hey next on the agenda open old business new business administrative matters. Our next meeting is July se uh 16th which we will have um this Tenon auto service and also I believe um Vina the planner will have her two need of the redevelopments
for Main Street and Ernston and Mini Mall Road for that um next meeting. No other for public. We need a motion. Motion second. All in favor. Anybody from the public like to speak?
Anybody from the public like to speak? Hearing nobody, I'll take a motion to close the public session. Motion. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? The eyes have it. Motion to adjurnn. I'll make a motion to adjurnn.
Second. All All in favor? Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great evening. Thank you.