Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Mayor, could you Excuse me. Mayor, could you turn there? Thank you. Going live. So much easier now. Good evening everyone. I'd like to call this March 12th meeting of the Hillsdale Burough Planning and Land News Board to order. We'll begin by the open public meeting statement read by our deputy secretary Tanya followed by the pledge of allegiance. This meeting is being held in accordance with the open public meetings act. The notice of this meeting was published in two newspapers according to law and time and place of this meeting have been posted in a prominent location in Burough. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. When you're ready, Tanya, we'll do a roll call. Chairwoman Keith here. Vice Chair Rearen here. Secretary Raymond. Mr. Alter here. Mr. Freriedman. Mr. Gre here. Dr. Weinberg here. Here. Mr. Hip here. Council on Kleti here. Mayor Shanko here. Also present is board attorney Mr. Leeman and board engineer Mr. Sadil.

Thank you Tanya. This meeting at this time I'll open the meeting to the public on any items or issues other than those listed on the agenda below or that may come before the board on another evening. Seeing no one in the public, I'll close the meeting to the public. We'll move on to our invoices. First, we have two invoices from Burgess Associates totaling $640. Do I have a motion to approve? Motion at Alter second Dr. Shine Dr. Weinberg sorry guys chairman yes don't look right vice chair rearen yes Mr. Alter yes Mr. Gre yes Dr. Weinberg yes Mr. Hip. Yes.

Council Ankleti. Yes. Mayor Shyu. Yes. Motion's passed. Thanks. Moving on to CSG law. There's three invoices for a total of $1,481. Use your view when you're ready. I'll take a motion. Was the previous balance paid? It always is. It just takes a while to go through everything. That's why it's Yeah. motion. Mr. Alter second chair mates yes vice chair weirden yes Mr. Alter yes Mr. Gre yes Dr. Wimber yes

Mr. Yes. Council Lei, yes. Mayor Shanku, yes. Motion's passed. Thank you. Moving on to our meeting minutes from February 12th, please review. And um someone who is present, when you're ready, make a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Is there a second? Second. Mayor Shank. Chairwoman Kates. Yes. Mr. Alter. Yes. Mr. Hip. Yes. Council Lee Zancetti. Yes. Mayor Shanku. Yes. Thank you. Motion's passed. Thank you. And thank you for those excellent minutes. Um our application. We have announcement about the application that was scheduled for this evening. Mr. Nurse here. Well, he's he he's not going to be till May 14th.

Okay. So, uh this was the application for 340 Broadway. This is where uh Mr. Lee's business used to be. Uh there was an issue with the notice. So this is going to be adjourned to May 14th at 7:30 p.m. in this room. There'll be no further notice published or mailed except to the utility companies that were noticed by the difference. So May 14th without any further notice besides the notice of the utility companies 7:30 p.m.

Thank you so much. So, at our last meeting, we discussed our 2025 annual report. Some people weren't here. Mr. Leman, do you want to update on on what we've done since our conversation?

So, when we um were reviewing the annual report, there was a discrepancy by the board because we had the cancer application which originally was a denial. We never actually voted on the resolution of denial and then it was amended as approved. So, we cleaned up the resolution. Mr. the field updated the table. Um the resolution notes that we had nine applications, eight were granted. There was the application for the property in Washington Township, but we determined we had no jurisdiction. So technically, we didn't render a decision and we have a resolution for the board to adopt Mr.'s summary as the board's annual report to the government,

right? And that's that date is noted in my amendment in the second paragraph. It was dated January 12th 26 with the attached tables revised February 14th.

Thank you. Are there any comments or questions before we vote on the resolution? Um, I still show the Caner application was denied and that was the one I questioned originally that they amended the denial before the resolution was approved. So it was never literally denied was actually approved because we approved the amendment. I mean they they

yeah the table the table that's attached to to what I had in front of me still says deny but I think that you corrected it this is still the this is still the January version that I have because I think you I don't know if the board has do you have the Yeah, you have Can we just maybe pass that around so the board can see what we're voting on? Pass that around. We don't have because I think you sent to me and then I updated the resolution. I didn't come up with the February date on my own.

Right. Thank you, Ed, for um noting that again that we haven't seen it changed version. While we're looking at that, how how do you recommend I know we're going to forward this on to the council. Do you recommend that um it's just noted by the council or should the leaison comment on it? Like what's what the what's the most useful way for the council to be presented with this? I I think the liaison should just bring it to the governing body's attention and second his report

in his report. Yeah. And I did get a phone call from a member of the council. We're playing some f tag now just asking questions about it. I guess the draft may have been shared. Somebody saw there was a question about the outdoor kitchen comment that was repeated from last year. So, as soon as I find out the question is, I'll answer it. Okay. Because that's a on page two of the resolution. Well, our looks like he seems like he knows what that is. No, some mysterious That was me because I I contacted Cass and then um Did you want to just hear more about the application? More about it and then I had some questions and my phone. So, we'll put it together and the goal.

Yeah, because you weren't sitting on the board then. Yeah. The goal is is and then Gali will follow up after my call and then it would be either to give the council an update in the next council meeting or the meeting after. Okay. Yeah. I think um I mean on my end what I hope to be shared is just you know the extent to which we are working with the applicants and granting reasonable reasonable variances if you look at the totality. So I think that's important to note. Just give the board time to review.

Okay. Are we ready yet to make a motion to adopt the annual this version? We'll call it the February 13th version, Chris. Is that what it is? The February February 13th version of our annual report revised 2025. Yeah. Eventually. Is that you? Tony, I'm gonna I'm gonna forward this to you right now. Thank you. Okay. All right. Is there a motion to accept this version? I'll make a motion. Thank you, Mr. Hook. Do I have a second?

Second. Thank you, Chair Mates. Yes. Vice Chair Reed. Yes, Mr. Alter. Yes, Mr. Greed. Yes, Dr. Weinberg. Yes, Mr. Hip. Yes, Council Leoni. Yes, Mayor Shinfield. Yes. Thank you. Motion's passed. Thank you. And thank you to professionals for your careful work on that. We have another discussion item 2026 planning board application.

Are you going to share this or Tanya? So, uh, yeah, the we had a close look at the ordinances and your ordinance allows um your application form to be modified by board without having to get anybody approval, but you need to endorse your application form by resolution. So, we have a short resolution that does that. And I have a red line of the changes that we've made. One of the changes is in paragraph 21 that if the property is owned by a separate that there has to be a disclosure statement provided for the honor as the municipal land law in the interest of transparency has a requirement that if there's an entity that's the applicant anybody knows more than 10% of the entity has to be disclosed in the application so you can't have like elected officials sneaking stuff through. Um, but the MLUL doesn't require that for the property owner, which I find troublesome because the same problem could occur. And for me as a lawyer, it's particularly troublesome because when I run conflict checks, I I don't want my name in the newspaper either. You know, for all I know, one of my law firm partners owns the property and I have no clue. So, uh, I'm including the same disclosure in your form for whoever the property owner is, so we can run accurate conflict checks. Um, then we added another section to paragraph 23. This is the owner's authority that the owner authorizes the application. added a line that says I further understand that if there are professional fees incurred in connection with the application but remain unpaid at the conclusion of the application that I am responsible for the payment of sand and I put that in there because sometimes you see somebody who's the contract purchaser for a property and their

contract says they are only going to close if they get approval and they will come in and have four hearings and run gigantic professional fees get a denial if they get approved they're going to pay the fee, but they get a denial and they just walk away. Well, their LLC has no assets. Um, how do you collect that fee? And then the property owner says, "Well, I wasn't the applicant." And ultimately, the responsibility to pay those fees actually belongs to the municipality. It's like the municipality is the client. It's not the applicant. So, I've added this line and I sense and mayor councilman I don't know if you got an email from Mark Gadoo in some of the communities I represent and have represented uh ordinances have been adopted that make it clear that if there's fees like this that are unpaid that the administrative officer certifies those fees to the tax assessor and they get put on the tax bill and you collect in the ordinary courses you know the next round of taxes and I don't know if it's ever actually happened before, but the hope is that that threat is sufficient to get those fees paid.

Why Why would it be a threat if if you're an owner and you look at it, you say, "Now my fee is going to be spread out across all the taxpayers in town versus not mine alone." So the only is I'm not I don't know any court case that's tested an ordinance like this. Okay. So I I can't say for certain what a court would do. I think that it would be enforceable. It's certainly reasonable. It's rational. It's not an arbitrary capriccious, you know, I'm just saying if I was if I were the owner of the property, didn't you want to pay? So, go ahead to somebody else.

Yeah. No, like I've got some escro bills that have been sitting out there for three, four years from communities where this has happened to me and it's just sitting there on my books. And I'll tell you what eventually happens. Eventually that that property owner goes to get a permit to put a deck on or to do a little crow hall. They say as soon as you pay this fee. Yeah. But aren't they able to then say this was never my expense. I'm not the one that came before. You know, it's never enough money to like really make the Okay. You know, it's Yeah. Unless Unless like we did with the with the um self storage where you're in there and have professional fees without out the you know what Yeah.

And remember for a dog and cat license they pay at the counter. Oh by the way we check the rest but you know you used to lost money. That's how law used to collect over there. And you know what like you say it's right to check out because there was no dog license. I got a check from uh from Murderville for $300 last year for an application that was eight years old that was due to my prior law firm and I called Paul Cal said you get out the money. Get the check. So anyway, this is to try and minimize that kind of headache. Um what else? Those were the only changes I had. So, did you make other changes that

on page six? I changed the referrals. Yeah. Remember the engineer? This actually just came up because um with one of the applications the college did reach out. Am I supposed to review this? Came out twice. It came up twice about it. So, yeah, this came up recently, right? And this is just because the board engineer is out different than the bureau. Exactly. So exactly correctly. I think and I think we told them Chris Ky was going to write I defer to the the our board engineer. I think that's I didn't even receive it. Yeah, I think that's what we were we told we told him to write. So maybe he just didn't send anything. Yeah.

Chris, do you have any comments about the changes? Any Okay. Board, are there any questions or comments about the proposed changes yet? Um the fees on the very last page. Do you have to indicate that uh the deposit goes into an escro account as opposed to just saying deposit? I just took this p this page from the um page 17. Yes. I I took this I just copied and pasted this from the the um I'm asking more question. Page 17. I Yeah. Yeah. Can I can I see what happened to the document I was working on?

He's saying instead of saying deposit cost saying deposit for escrow that's the escro. This is a copy of the ordinance. Just say escrow deposit. Yeah. And it would be better if it's an escro deposit. It's going into escrow. Sure. Give him that hope of getting it back when I take this up. Yeah. So, do you even have a phone? No, I don't have this. I just went online. This is Yeah, Tanya didn't get this was literally what's online for the I just copied and pasted. I guess with that in mind, if any of these fees need to be updated to say it's more informative to the last year, I think they were recently

cuz it does go into trust account. Yeah. Let me pull up the uh Chris, we updated the fees last year, right? Does that sound good? They look updated, right? Yeah. Tanya's pretty good about watch. We don't get any Tanya's the best board secretary I've ever seen. It's not even a close call in every way. There's no payoff. It's on the fee schedule. It's a banker. Yeah. What's that? 137

13827. No results.

Yeah. of the building department are still chapter three time by the time they come in there I think to pick up a permit but I think full 27 I think it's okay to leave it like this but yeah because they don't 360 yeah and that's exactly just as the positive cost that's what it is Any other questions?

Okay. Are we ready to do a motion? Yes. Do I have a motion to approve this 2026 planning board application update? ask for. Yeah, that's exactly what's in the ordinance. The governing body is the only body that can change the language of the ordinance. So, just leave it. He's saying it's not worth the you can verbally tell someone that the cost means it has growth towards board. Okay. I go over everything with somebody if it's not an attorney, which they tell their clients. I tell everybody.

So, they always call they and they have to sign in in this burrow. You have to sign the back of the deposit slip and you have to sign a voucher for your ass. You got to get W9, right? Anyway, yeah. So, like there's a lot of stuff you have to do for it to open the escrow. So, so they're well aware. Okay. So, is there a motion? Motion. Okay. Thank you. Second. Dr. Weinberg. Thank you. Mr. H. Chairman Gates. Yes. Vice Chair Reen. Yes. Mr. Alter. Yes. Mr. Greet. Yes. Dr. Weinberg. Yes. Mr. Hip. Yes. Council Lee. Yes. Mayor Shank. Yes.

Motions passed. Again, thank you so much to our professionals, Mr. Leman and for your continuing eye on that and work in all areas. At this time, I'll open the meeting to the public. Does anyone from the public wants to address the board at this time? Seeing none, I'll close the meeting to the public. Are there any other discussion items we have planned? Anyone have anything? Okay. Mr. Leeman would like to let's just hear one at a time. Mr. Leeman. So just two two kind of comments. Um one the uh Croni litigation is still ongoing. Uh there was just another extension to the briefing schedule which I think you should should all I'm just just everything I'm telling you is filed on a public document.

Just checking. Yeah. So uh briefs are scheduled up push back two weeks. Um, and then the other thing, there's a new update on your website. Just to make people in the land use world familiar, there is a new scam going around where scammers are going to bur websites, finding information online for applications that are pending, and then submitting fairly sophisticated looking invoices to the applicants saying, "Hey, you're you owe us $6,000. You have to replenish your escrow by wire immediately or your application is going to be dismissed." in in Bitcoin.

So, so if you if you're involved in this world, just please share this information. Um because like it's pretty sophisticated. Um so if you're an applicant applying, be aware. Yeah. To verify.

How do we how do we let the applicants know that there's a stand? So, I prepared a a one-page warning sheet that like really lays it out and TA has sent it to all the pending applicants. I've sent it to at least five or eight board secretaries in Bergen County. The Bergen County Bar Association's land use committee is going to share it also. Um, and hopefully people don't fall prey to it. But I have some sophisticated clients who have gotten these notices, including one yesterday who called the board sec or emailed the board secretary and copied me. I just got this $7,000 escro bill. We just paid $6,000 last week. What the hell's going on? It's like, that's a scam. Do not pay that. In my department, we filed an application for a partner who's got an application on his house. He got a bill for 3,000. He told the associate, "I'll bring the check to the meeting." She was like, "What the hell are you talking about?" And this guy's a former federal prosecutor who was getting ready to write a check. So, just something to be aware, especially for you guys if you were kind of in the business. I'm sure they're hunting for LLC applicants.

Yeah. For big money things where a $3,000 check is just a drop in the hat and they don't flinch. But some of them are smaller like so like Mrs. Jones with her home addition gets a bill for $850. She calls Venmo them or whatever to Nigeria then gets the real bill from Chris and goes I paid this already. Chris's would have been 1,600. So anyway, um sort of the downside to this in in Dumont, the um the business administrator made the decision no application materials are going to be filed on the burough website at all.

Um every community kind of has to decide how it wants to handle that. It's very convenient to have that material, but it makes it easy for scammers to get in there. So something to consider. So you're going to write something up that will be given to the applicant. I did. What about having on our planning board website? There's a warning. It says scam alert. Never pay professional fees to send. Yeah, it's all it's in the reference to statutes there. Okay. And um I sent it to all the applicants that we have now already scheduled and anybody knew that before they get scheduled, I'll make sure they have it as soon as they submit the application to us.

Okay. Also, if you bring drawings of people's homes home with you, like applications, show people's house layouts, don't just throw them out. Anybody can find them, right? Somebody can grab it, then they can verize the house. So, we're very careful. We get everything. We shred all our stuff. Anybody getting our stuff being found in the dumpster, somebody goes and rob the house because we were careless with that. Stuff like it's stupid stuff, which you got to watch today. It's just dumpster divers all over the place. But everything's online. Yeah, that's a big like you can't Oprah that stuff. Yeah. But meanwhile, it's online because they came for an application, you know, a year ago.

You go to Zillow.com and find the listing and see what Well, crimerevention, right? I didn't I didn't expect this to be part of my municipal land use. Exactly. Thank you. Saturday night. And anyone have some good news to end with? I guess we're jouring. That's not bad. So, um, our next public meeting will be Tuesday, March 24th, 2026. We will have a hearing. We have, um, two will we have a concept hearing and which would be quick and the 276 282 Broadway both for the same attorney.

Yes. Okay. Um, so that'll be here. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? Motion. Thank you, Dr. Wber. Second. Thanks. Thank you, everybody.