MINUTES OF A REGULAR MEETING OF THE PLANNING BOARD

OF THE BOROUGH OF MOUNTAIN LAKES

June 27, 2013

Chair Jim Bailey read the Open Public Meeting Advertisement Notice adopted at the annual meeting on January 24, 2013:  Adequate notice of this meeting was given to the Citizen and the Daily Record, filed with the Borough Clerk, posted on the Bulletin Board in the Borough Hall on January 28, 2013 and made available to all those requesting individual notice and paying the required fee.

Meeting start: 7:33 pm

ROLL CALL:

Members Present: Bailey, Zamierowski, DeVenezia (7:40), Kane, Tovo, Happer, Bravo, and Dagger

Absent: Nachshen and Horan

Also Present: Attorney Peter Henry

Also Absent: Engineer Bill Ryden

REVIEW OF MINUTES: Dan Happer made a motion to adopt the minutes of the April 25^th meeting. Robert Tovo provided the second; the minutes were approved by voice vote of all eligible voters.

RESOLUTIONS:

Hornrock Properties, LLC                                 App. # 13-253

Peter Henry explained to the Board he would be making some clerical changes to the resolution. Jim Bailey made a motion to adopt the resolution of approval with the changes discussed; John Zamierowski provided the second. The resolution was carried by a vote of 7 to 0 with members Bailey, Zamierowski, DeVenezia, Kane, Tovo, Happer and Dagger voting in favor.

PUBLIC HEARING: none

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Master Plan Review – Jim Bailey explained the housing element was the last section of the Master Plan the Board needed to review before the public hearing on the whole document. He had spoken to the Borough Planner, Paul Philips, about updating this chapter, he advised the Board to delay the process. Chairmen Bailey said we could not wait any longer for the state to determine how they wanted to handle affordable housing. We wanted to get the Master Plan adopted in its entirety this fall so we have three options available to us. One was to put in the housing element adopted by the Board in 2005, two was to use the draft element prepared by our previous Planner, Susan Kimball in 2010, or three was to put in a version of the 2010 draft. After consulting the Planner the chair decided to do the latter.

Chairmen Bailey explained in 2009 the Council put together a committee to examine the Borough’s need to update the housing element of the Master Plan and ready themselves for our third round obligation. Said committee drafted a new housing element dated January 11, 2010 which was never adopted. Mr. Bailey said he decided to pull out most of the historical information from the draft and added an explanation of the current COAH situation.

Martin Kane confirmed the version presented tonight was really a place holder for the element in our Master Plan. Blair Bravo said the committee did a great job on the history. The Council had many discussions over the past 10 years wanting to control their own destiny pertaining to building affordable housing. She suggested the 2010 census data be added as well as the municipal trust fund ordinance. Peter Henry said the Master Plan would not be the place for the ordinance.

Dan Happer updated the Planning Board on the recent developments affecting the seizing of local COAH trust funds. Currently towns must prove to the state they have projects with valid plans in order to keep their funds if not they loose their money.

There was much discussion about what to include in the element. Besides updating it to include the 2010 census data we will be removing this last sentence of 2^nd paragraph in the introductory note, consistently refer to the Legacy of Mountain Lakes project using the same name and will change one of the towns servicing us for water utilities from Boonton Township to Boonton. This element will be used as a placeholder for our Master Plan until something changes and becomes more final with the state. At that time the Planner, Paul Phillips, will rewrite the chapter.

The Board did a final review of elements 7, 8 9, 10 and 13. Tom Dagger expressed a desire to work with Jim Bailey to make some changes to the historic preservation element. There has been some discussion about removing tables 1 and 2 from the element. Martin Kane was concerned the history of Mountain Lakes in other chapters was inconsistent with the housing element. The maps (appendix B-D) were updated by Bill Ryden.

The chair explained the plan was to create a book for all the Board members to review in September and have a public hearing in October on the entire plan.

No other committee reports at this time.

Other Business

No one was present from the public. Our next meeting on July 25^th will be cancelled do to a lack of a quorum so the next time we will meet is August 22^nd.

The Council would be voting to approve a 2^nd alternate for the Board at their July meeting.

Robert Tovo made a motion to adjourn the meeting and Martin Kane provided the second.  The meeting was adjourned at 8:28 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

                                                                                    Cynthia Shaw, Secretary