e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e [Music] okay good evening everyone uh I called this meeting of the township of Union planning board to order uh dated uh
February 27 2025 um Sunshine no please pursuant to the open public meetings law notice of this meeting stating the time in place was Satisfied by the filing of an annual notice with the local source and the Star Ledger
newspapers of General circulation within the township of Union and posted on the bulletin board of the township of Union Municipal Building roll call please Mr Alexander Mr
Cohan M Espinosa here Mr fr here Mr Miller here M Perkins here mayor Bowser here committee woman Terrell here miss KH here miss Caleb here chairman Lee
here uh can we swear in the engineer Mr n will raise your right hand you swear the testimony about to give us the truth the whole trth true I do uh can we get a motion to approve the minutes from January 23 2025 so move
move by Mr Miller is there a second second seconded by Mrs Khan uh roll call please M Espinosa Mr Frank yes Mr Miller yes M
Perkins I am not pres Mr Bowser yes Mr committee woman Terrell yes M Khan yes M Kaya yes chairman Lee yes all right um we had a resolution on
on the agenda but however that resolution is not ready um it's still being drafted uh which is the resolution for watch Young developers LLC going to new business um we are going to just rearrange a couple things things I don't believe I see um Miss
Russell to do the presentations um so with that I'm going to call uh application 20233 380 Princeton Road um Can the representative just I'll just take a few moments alen J Barkin Schwarz Barkin and
Mitchell on behalf of the applicant thank you and uh I will uh defer to our councel uh after reading theond we've had conversations with m in our office
application board's position that this application is not complete be heard because should be a major application as opposed to minor uh can you provide us any review letters from uh your engineering staff that indicate that or
the basis for we have a letter from the uh Fire official dated uh August 12th 2024 indicating that the revised plans that were submitted does not alleviate their concern that that you need a c act for emergency vehicles
but that does not reference a whether it's a major or a minor and the obviously the Fire official would not be in a position uh to make that determination so is there any basis for the for the opinion you're giving sir
well I believe that the the engineer position is and and it is our position that uh this would be constitute a major application and we concerned that proper notice is given well we have we have numerous letters from the engineering
department saying that it is a minor subdivision and we have no letters indicating that it's a major and we would like you to put on the record since we're only hearing about this for the first time tonight your basis for determining that it's a major versus a
minor subdivision again we have the recommendation from uh the fire department uh that it needs a culdesac and as such um there's been no application to indicate that um and we believe that including the CAC which is
required uh by the fire department would make this a major application how how can the fire department require a culdesac on a street that we've as as I'm sure you're aware we've changed our plan so we're no longer having the
houses Front on Fairfield and so how could this applicant be required to create a subdivision on a street where in fact we're closing off an access we're not adding any access that seems
to be a complete pretense and we're not aware of any law that uh permits the town to require a subdivision I'm sorry to require a culdesac on a uh two house subdivision uh again um the position is
quite clear that we believe this is a major and that the application needs to be you you've offered absolutely no legal basis for that opinion you've cited no opinion of your engineers that this is a major subdivision we've had
five review letters and not one of them is referred to this as a major in fact all of them have referred to is a minor so you seem to be creating a complete sham here this is ridiculous we're going to assume that this is a denial we are
not extending time anymore our application was deemed complete almost two years ago and we're gonna we're really leaving us no choice but to proceed to court we understand okay thank you very much appreciate you
getting this out early nothing else well there you go um sh then vote that we would adj that matter until the app file corrected application with notice so move by Mrs Perkin is there a
second seconded by Miss espanosa um roll call please yeah it's it's uh the motion was to adjourn the matter until a major subdivision application was FC yeah cool
I'm just going to say before you vote I'm going to say one more time this is a minor subdivision it's been called that by your engineering department for the last two years and I've asked for anything that indicates that it's otherwise and no one's produced it all
I've gotten is uh a reference to a fire department issue which no longer is applicable to our revised application so so noted all right Boll call please Miss espanosa
yes Mr fr yes Mr Miller yes Miss Perkins yes mayor Bowser yes committee woman Terrell yes Miss Khan yes Miss CID yes chairman Lee Yes okay um Mrs Russell is still not
here so we will proceed to 13 1939 voxell Road and thank you for very much for your patience from the last time and just for a few brief moments here Mr scholnick thank you chairman members of the board I'm Richard scholnick on
behalf of the applicant 1939 vs Hall Road LLC we're dealing with block 2304 lot 11 excuse can you just that one oh over there oh because we would need the expert uh witnesses to utilize a tablet
to present any files absolutely we're in the DT Zone and we're proposing one residential unit over an existing garage there's four units out there in one building there is an existing garage
that's attached and there's sort of some attic space there's virtually no exterior changes just the uh movement of a dormer uh so it's this attic space and the proposal is to add a modest
approximate 1 ,000 square foot two-bedroom apartment we're in that very rare territory of a permitted use with no variances we're compliant on parking there's actually a surplus of three
spaces on the residential site Improvement standards Mr Hatter gave us a challenging time but there are some uh material drainage improvements that are going to happen so there's sort of a site upgrade
that's going to go along we don't have any issues with the December 12th colar review letter and I just have one witness chairman I think we're going to be about 10 minutes uh uh Kathy uh meller is our civil engineer if I could
call her up and she'll go through the site plan uh chairman we didn't bring the architect uh we thought it was a little Overkill I know uh this board uh amongst others is uh cogn of the cost to the applicants in terms of processing
applications so we did submit a floor plan there's a little El it's really just a a slight movement of the door really nothing outside nothing the public will really see so um we we hope it's acceptable Kathy has uh reviewed
the plans and hopefully can answer any questions if I could have her sworn yes can you raise your hand state state your name and spell your last name for the record please k with a c meller mue l l r m Muller do you swear the testimony about to give the truth the whole truth
nothing about the truth yes I do thank you your professional qualifications please I have a bachelor's of Science in civil and environmental engineering from Clarkson University I'm the president and owner of uh Mueller Engineering in Warren Township New Jersey I have my
professional engineering license in New Jersey it's in good standing and I've tested for IED in front of multiple boards throughout Somerset Union Mars County the board stipulates we appreciate that if you could just run through existing conditions what's
proposed here so the the plans that I have on the screen here are the ones that were submitted as part of our application uh revised let's get through this 12424 let me just just confirm that she
said something else for minute yes 12424 um we had submitted as you heard for just the the applicant had submitted for the addition of a apartment over an existing garage to the rear of the the
improvements on the property at which time we have feedback from your engineer that it would be a site plan requiring board application um so what we had done at that point is we revised the plans to address some of his concerns mainly for
drainage um we shifted around some parking spaces per his recommendation so as you can see on the cover sheet is our existing conditions uh we are in the DT Zone with Frontage along Vox Hall Road there's a dwelling in the front which
contains four two-bedroom apartments there's a 20 foot two-way aisle on the right side of the property that accesses the rear garages this building back here has four bays and sufficient parking on
grade as well for the the four um and additional one that we're proposing residential uses around and there's an existing Municipal storm drain that actually goes through the property so when I turn to page two I'll show you
the improvements that we're doing on the site where's Theon the pan button sorry just a different Ado I'll figure it out thank you where's the little hand to drag it around so you can
either use the mouse or you can use the key oh okay but you okay thank you and it's touchcreen oh perfect so as Mr skolnick had indicated we're actually not doing any improvements that expand any buildings we're not doing any
improvements that expand any pavement we have zero increase in impervious coverage all of our existing setbacks will stay the same and the second floor apartment will go over the rear portion of the structure so just to run through
some some zoning to get it on the record uh the minimum laot area required is 12,500 the lot is complying at 16,48 the lot depth of 100's required we're at 219 it's fairly deep um the lot width is
required at 125 uh existing is 111 that's an existing non-conformance uh obviously we have no impact on the width of the lot the minimum front yard requires five and the existing building sits at
4.7 these sidey yards required at five our closest corner of a building is 9.3 and again and we're not changing any of the building footprint building coverage Remains the Same at 19.6% where up to 50 is allowed and impervious
coverage we're at 55.6 where 80% is allowed so again we're not expanding we're not building anything we're utilizing all the facilities that are there for the feedback from your initial Engineers
review is he wanted to see some drainage improvements there's a couple inlets in the back it's a little bit of a low point on the site in the neighbor site the neighbors above us in the front slightly lower in the back um so what we are proposing is to construct a curb
it's 85 ft of curbing that we're going to construct along the right side of the property because it does pitch that way and then along the back right along the edge of the pavement we're not expanding the pavement we're just going to redirect that water that was going towards our neighbor and the inlets in
the back and put in a new inlet at the corner of the curb which will co uh catch all that water from the existing impervious and direct it directly to the this uh storm pipe that traverses the the lot it's a 24 inch pipe so it's
fairly large and then also just for rsis purposes to look at the parking requirements uh we do have four existing two-bedroom and we're proposing one so we'll have a total of five two-bedrooms
Apartments requiring 10 spaces we have four within the garage we have four behind those doors of the garage because we have sufficient depth of the pavement there to be able to park uh so it's equivalent to a townhouse that has a
onecar garage and a driveway behind it so that's eight right there by the structure and then we have an additional four on grade towards the back for a total of 12 um 10 are required so we actually not only meet the the parking
we exceed it um so that that's about the gist of the application again we're not changing any zoning numbers we're adding the apartment and we have sufficient parking for it so if there's any questions I'd be happy to answer them
questions from the board you didn't believe me when I said 10 minutes chairman but I think we pulled it in well we're not going to fill Buster this right okay um uh and do you have you said only one witness right that's it the owner is
here if there's any okay questions you may have Mr chairman just one one question regarding please the height of that roof you said that it was a minor change to the roof line do you have any idea height wise what that change is approximately we have it in the in the package Kathy you have it right I do
it's the the eight or the 11 by 17 one sheet um The Ridge line is not changing so what they've actually proposed is to pop out Dormers with windows so the footprint of the garage is approximately
1200 and change square feet in the apartment is going to be about a thousand so he's keeping the ridge on the roof and popping out Dormers which will be at a lower elevation just so for the record the height of the building is not changing that's correct okay thank
you any other questions Mr SC if you would would you like to sum uh I think I'll pass on that chairman okay um comments from the board not yet comments from the public which we
don't really have a public out right now but um all right so uh can I get a motion to approve the application for 1939 Vox Hall Road Block 2304 lot 11 is there a motion move by Mr fr is there
a second second second by m Miss k um roll call please I'm sorry I didn't hear who made the motion uh it was it was moved by Mr fr Mr fr seconded by Mrs C thank you very much okay Mr Espinosa yes Mr fr yes Mr Miller
yes M Perkins yes mayor Bowser yes committee woman Terrell yes Miss KH yes Miss kid yes Mr Lee Yes chairman Lee sorry thank you for your time app thank you for your patience and nice to see everybody have a good night Mr sking
have good night um yes I know we had two items uh up front on the agenda pertaining to some presentations from Mrs Russell regarding the master plan and and the ordinance um
M Mr yeah I think I'm going to do my best uh christien Russell impersonation because this has to go back to the uh Township committee okay all right so if you bear with me I go through the the uh
two uh two amendments the the first one and um I'm just going to read from from uh Chris report Le um so goal one in in um the master
plan is to maintain the character of existing residential neighborhoods while providing opportunities for housing types that meet the interests and needs of all ages and abilities um preser the Integrity of established single family
and two family home neighborhoods by preventing intrusion or more intense [Music] uses will will generate overcrowding and increase traffic uh prevent incompatible
non-residential uses from locating on residential streets or in residential areas which would generate adverse impacts to traffic noise safety or infrastructure So to that end uh she was able to review the NC district and found
that there were several oh back all right um there were several Lots within the NC District that they thought that should be rezoned to be in the ra District or the residential
district um there is a list of the properties there but those properties are generally along Tucker Sinclair Carolyn Road Chestnut Street and Mercer Avenue and that this allows to protect the existing character and allow single
family residential uses to continue as permitted principal uses uh instead of in the NC now it would be in the ra District so um based on the evaluation of Miss Russell I believe that this is
consistent with the with the master plan and we should uh do a resolution back to the board I'm sorry back to the governing body indicating that it is consistent with the master plan are there any questions for the
engineer I I have a question can can just for my knowledge can you uh explain the difference between um NC and ra it what does that mean like is it R does NC mean they can build built you know yeah
so the the NC District allows for non-residential uses in it so like warehouses and correct so so be more commercial used mixed buildings um items like that so not necessarily warehousing but but you'd have more of retail
components and Commercial components in what's you know and what she did here is pulled out certain ones that are more in a residential neighborhood that you wouldn't want to see those those changes to yeah so you pull that back into the ra which is strictly residential so you prevent that from happening from that
neighborhood changing from a single family residential okay right so principal permitted uses in ra is strictly residential and you're so you're just you're eliminating the possibility of something else in that neighborhood makes
sense thank you you're welcome any other questions from board members hearing none qu uh questions from the public uh comments from board members and comments from the public all
right can I get a uh motion to concur the findings of the 2025 master plan reexamination and land use Amendment uh and sent back to the township committee for a final adoption so move by Mr fr is there a
second second seconded by Mrs Perkins uh roll call please M espanosa yes Mr fr yes Mr Miller yes Miss Perkins yes mayor Bowser
yes committee woman Terell yes Miss Khan yes Miss kid yes chairman Lee yes all right and we have one more item which is the uh review of the ordinance additional amendments for senson Avenue Redevelopment Mr davic sure thank you
the um this ordinance is is to uh change the uh area need for the Redevelopment agre agement the study was prepared back in 2018 for phase 4 of The Landmark Redevelopment project the project was
looked at again and the objective was uh what to amend the Redevelopment plan to further uh for the following bulk requirements there was a maximum Building height change um as you face
dyerson Avenue at 60 ft four stories facing bonell Court 60 ft and five stories a minimum building separation uh 90 ft minimum building depth 65 ft uh the required
setbacks the uh on Styers was zero on bonell was 5 feet on the west uh side west side of Styers was 0 ft and then the West Side aanal minimum 5 ft and then rear yard requirement 25 ft
building coverage was also amended to 80% and maximum impervious coverage 85% the um Township committee agrees that the proposed amendments are in the best interest of the project and the
township and through the introduction of there within or the ordinance um these recommendations are made and I think I've in indicated to the board previously that these changes are really
essentially being made to shift density within the existing uh the existing project there are certain there are several phases this is to um not increase density density necessarily but to shift it so that they will be able to
create more open space and activated public space within the the overall project so um so that's why these the these changes are being made again this is something that the the Board needs to send back to the
township committee indicating you've seen this that it's consistent and um you're you don't necessarily you go you're going to see the next phase any new plans are going to come back in front of the board but this is just
changing those bulk requirements so those become the new standards in this Redevelopment in this phase of the Redevelopment so that they're allowed to come back to the planning board and not seek a variance from the board of adjustment okay questions from the
board questions from the public comments from the board comments from the public uh can I get a motion to um concur with the ordinance which
includes the proposed amendments to the uh Redevelopment plan and shall be submitted back to the township committee for final adoption I'll make a motion uh to do just that as well as to make a
note that the any portion of this that will allow for more open space and more public space would be a positive in my personal opinion but I do move that so move by Mrs Perkins is there a second second seconded by Mr Miller roll call
please M Espinosa yes Mr fr yes Mr Miller yes Miss Perkins yes mayor Bowser yes committee woman Terrell yes Miss con yes Miss kid yes chairman Lee Yes
Lee there is no further new business and so with that is there a motion to adjourn mooved by Mrs Khan is there second seconded by Mrs Espinosa all those in favor say I I all those oos meeting adjourned have a good night