Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

All right. Well, I'm going to start the opening remarks at least and then we'll we're not voting on anything for a little while. So, all right. Good evening and welcome to the December 15, 2025 meeting of the city of summit planning board. My name is Steven Spur and I have the privilege of serving as chairman of this August body. If you'll please rise, we will begin first with 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, justice for all.

Thank you. Uh, in accordance with New Jersey statute 104-10, adequate notice of this meeting has been provided to newspapers of record and posted here in city hall. For the benefit of the interested public, this meeting is being livereamed to the city's YouTube page and also broadcast on Summit's government channel, which is comcast channel 34 and Verizon channel 30. Any hearings on applications for development in this meeting are quasi judicial proceedings. Any questions or comments must be limited to the issues that are relevant to what the board may legally consider in reaching a decision and a quorum appropriate to a judicial hearing must be maintained at all times. Please note that fire exits are to my right, your left, and at the back of the room where you entered. The city has a listening system to assist the hearing impaired. If anyone needs hearing assistance, please attain the necessary equipment here at the de and return it immediately after our meeting. Miss Ans, will you please call the role of the members?

Chairman Spur here. Vice Chair Balsson Alvarez here. Mayor Fagan is excused. Council member Hamlet here. Miss Bowen. Well, wait like 15 seconds and you'll get her. Say here. Susan. Miss Bowen. Say here for us. Here. Thank you. Mr. Domaso here. Mr. Fel here. Mr. Lejoy is excused. Mr. Salah here. Mr. Stern here. Mr. Stuntton here. You have a quorum. You may proceed.

Excellent. Um, to my right is Mr. Warner. Mr. Warner is the planning board's attorney. He'll advise board members on matters of law and serves as a key interface with each applicant's attorney. Mr. Warner will not vote on the applications or other matters formally considered by this board. Um, you heard from her briefly before. Jessica Sans is a city employee and is the planning board secretary. Miss Sans assists applicants in preparing their applications, planning our agendas, keeping our meeting minutes. Miss Hanss does not vote on the applications or other matters formally considered by this board. Typically, we would also have a number of board professionals, planners, and um a planner and an engineer, but given the composition of the agenda, um they have left the table open for Barbara to have. So, we're happy about that. Um just briefly to set some context uh while we'll hear um some discussion of adjournment of the one application um for the sake of those that are following closely along. I'll provide you the rules of the roads anyhow so you're well prepared for when that uh application is ultimately heard. Our board consists of 11 reg of 11 members. All members can participate in the hearing tonight but a maximum of nine can vote. All applications require a simple majority to be approved. EP each application will begin with the respective applicant's attorney providing an overview of the application process to date and the variance relief requested. We then hear from any expert witnesses the applicant may have to help explain their application and why the variance is requested or needed. The board members may ask questions of the applicant, their attorney, and their expert witnesses. Once the board professionals at the invitation of the chair and then board members have completed their questioning, the public will have an opportunity to ask questions. This is not the time to tell us what you think about the application. That opportunity comes at the end of end of each hearing. Before you ask your questions, please clearly state your name, spell your last name, and provide your address. It is important that our stenographer and the synography is completed over the audiovisisual system uh be kept be kept clear and accurate uh public record. After all witnesses have been heard, members of the interested public have their second opportunity to

speak and at that time, you may express your opinion, positive or negative, about the application. The board attorney will swear you in so that your comments have the full weight of sworn testimony just like those of the applicants witnesses. Then the public portion of the hearing is closed and we enter into deliberations where board members discuss and the application and then vote. You'll be you'll be able to listen to our deliberations, but you will not normally be able to participate. The city zoning officer has asked that we remind all applicants that they must read carefully the resolution that documents the planning board's decision and to pay particular attention to the conditions contained in the resolution. For example, if a landscaping plan is required, you must obtain one and submit it to the city's forester. If a grading plan is required, you must have one prepared by a civil engineer and submit three copies along with the application fee to the city's engineering division. Failure to satisfy all conditions in a resolution will result in a delay in approving your application as it will cause extra work for city land use staff. The resolutions documenting the board's decision will normally be available one month after we decide the application. That said, u we won't go through that full exercise likely this evening. Um, I think Barbara, if you don't mind, we're going to hold you for just one minute. Perhaps we can invite Mr. Weber to come forward. Um, and as he does approach, we'll note that we anticipated hearing uh Lynen Place RTR LLC uh their application uh for a minor subdivision. Uh but what's going on, Mr. Weber?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. The applicant has been approached by several neighbors and they have suggested changes to be made to the plan to address their specific concerns. We need the adjournment to revise the plans in order to uh embody those suggested changes. Okay. Um I think Mr. Warner over email at least today was in contact with uh your colleague Miss Alfonso with a question about whether or not the request would uh include further notice or without further notice. Mory, you just want to speak for a quick second to the steps you undertook and a recommendation you may have for the board.

Happy to do so, Mr. Chairman. I did have an opportunity to the request was that the matter be carried with without further notice. I did have an opportunity to review the notice that was provided. I found the content to be sufficient. I found it to be timely served for this evening. Uh certified mailing took place on November 19th and the publication was actually twice done on November 27 and November 30. Therefore, the proper notice was provided at least 10 days prior to this evening. uh which does give the board jurisdiction to hear and decide the application tonight or to recognize that upon the request of a an adjournment without further notice, the board has the jurisdiction and the ability to grant that request without requiring the applicant to provide further notice but simply to uh adjourn to a date certain time and place. The time and place I could guess the date may or may not change. uh probably should be the first meeting in January because that's the only one we have scheduled I believe formally as of yet. So that may be an indication of when it would be. Um but ultimately it's the discretion of the board to decide with or without further notice. I don't know if there's any further information the board wishes to obtain from uh uh uh from applicants council but uh

I have a question. Sure. Or me. I have one too. Okay. Um, so if they're being revised, when will the revisions be posted? So there's We would expect uh even now we're having a meeting with the experts to make those revisions. So as soon as they're done, we'll have those in probably well within 20 days before the 26. So Okay. Because I was going to ask what would we require if it's at least 10 days? 10, right? Yeah. Yeah. So 20 is good. Thanks.

Uh Steve, can you talk about the recent changes to the MLUL and carrying a meeting with uh without notice? Yeah, the the well the if you're referring to the publication requirements. Yes. Okay. the the um uh we can now even uh and certainly by March we'll uh be make uh able to uh first you could do notice by way of digital publication in the newspapers caught up newspapers I put

maybe I'm not maybe I'm not answering my question the right way and I don't want to interrupt you but um it sounds like there's going to be some changes to your plan based on community feedback and from what I understand due to recent changes in the MLUL that would require renoticing the meeting? Not not necessarily. No. I guess my question is for the community, why wouldn't we want to renotice it? You're making positive changes. You want to scream from the rooftops that you're working with the community. Maybe 10 members of that street didn't get the notice the first time. So, I just I see no benefit to not renoticing based on my previous experience and not that's separate from a legal issue. That's, as I said, the discretion of the board, right?

But legally, you have the authority to go either way with or without. But if they're making substantive changes, then can you give advice to the board on how we should look at that material?

Sure. We don't know whether they are or they are not making substantive changes. What I did in my communications with the applicants council when they made the request for without further notice uh was I told them first I have to ensure that the board has jurisdiction this evening and second of all the board reserved its rights in writing to require further notice even if we did not require further notice this evening based upon what those changes may ultimately be. At the time, we were only provided with we're going to uh uh make some plan changes. Now, if those changes, as I put in my written response to applicants council in anticipation, uh if those changes require any variance relief, any additional variance relief, any increase in the magnitude of the deviations for the relief already proposed, uh we would require further notice. So, we reserve that right. But at the time, all we know knew was not much more than we know right now, which is we may be making some changes to make some neighbors happy. So without any further information,

hence my inquiry to the board, do you want to ask more questions of applicants council? It may help.

So So maybe before we offer Mr. where the opportunity to characterize to the extent he can today uh changes he may anticipate the applicant making to bring those neighbors you know in into the camp of celebrating this lot division. I would just note that carrying an application certainly to a regularly scheduled meeting with the presence of council with the opportunity for that council to be questioned uh by members of the board is not an atypical process by by any means and I would frankly applaud the applicant for taking the due time investing the time and effort uh to hear thoroughly the questions comments of of neighbors seeking to address those and incorporate them within the application um so that we can quickly address uh the application the questions outstanding when the the application is is properly heard. So

all good points if I may add we we we we uh and we continue to reserve our rights as a board to require further notice if and when if we don't this evening. Um but but uh also in particular, you may want to address um whether or not you anticipate additional variances andor uh uh deviations of existing variances of a greater magnitude than presently exist. The notice that we provide to the neighbors has a clause in it saying that the board has the right during the course of the application process to allow changes in that application. With regard to this issue tonight, the res uh uh uh requests by the neighbors have been a larger buffer along the rear uh checking on the drainage. Uh adjusting the architecture in order to address the fenistration that addresses the neighbors windows. And then they're asking about can we move the front yard even closer. Now, there's a front yard variance that's already being requested that's based on the average, and that would be something that would be before this board as to whether or not to make that adjustment. We haven't been able to encapsulate that yet in our discussions. So, when you're looking at something such as the buffer along the rear lot line, and now all you say, gee, you know, do we need a three-foot enhanced strip for that? If we're going to have that enhanced three-foot strip, then do we take it off the front yard where we have that averaging? We take these issues, as Mr. Warner and the chair knows and the board knows, conservatively. So, if it turns out that we're going to be at that point, even if it's questionable, we always take the position that our notice provides the board with a great amount of discretion,

but if we can remove that question entirely, we'll renotice, right? So we we take it conservatively. Okay.

I mean it's my opinion and I welcome kind of the any other further come from the board that as Mr. Warner has represented this evening the potential scope of modification to it's not even the number of variances but um the the the adjustment magnitude of those variances doesn't constitute a substant a substantial change. If they were though to deviate in addition in adding variances or the magnitude substantially deviating, um we'd likely hear back from Mr. Warner, uh we'd likely hear back from him and his uh his applicant that they'd be more amendable to providing additional notice. Um but I think what I want to add as well is we did not hear from our own council that the notice was in any way deficient. So we believe based upon the information that we have before us that the individuals that were anticipated to have received the notice as stipulated by the MLUL would have received it. Um maybe I'll take a moment's pause here. Is anyone in the audience that came this evening um interested for the regarding this application? A couple you just raise your hand for me. Yeah. Okay.

So Yep. Yep. for the subdivision. Exactly. All right. So soon to be members of the Mr. Weber fan club here. Um, he's always been someone I've known in the world of land use to proactively seek the input of neighbors and actively seek to incorporate that input into a positive outcome for all parties involved. So, if you have not already been in touch with Mr. Warner or Mr. Weber, sorry, talk to him too, but start with Mr. Weber. Um, please do make sure that you we use this additional time assuming that the board chooses to carry it to the to the Jan January 20 26th meeting. um that you have a chance to share your concerns, your questions with him and have those addressed. The last thing I will before I offer the board opportunity to comment is we would anticipate having the original plans that were put forward for this meeting as well as whatever is modified available for review online. So we can see

by at least the 10day period, but we heard from Mr. Weber we're going to aspire to something closer to 20 days, but minimum 10. Minimum 10 days. Yes. So we can see the positive progress right there on the city of summit's website of Mr. Weber and his team's hard work. So I'm happy to meet with them as well right now outside. Yeah, that if you're not if you don't want to hear the presentation, you could do that for sure. But

I would just like to add Yeah. Um, for the sake of receiving and completing u u receiving plans and completing adequate staff comment, I would recommend that you submit them uh as early as possible to the board secretary so that the board planner and engineer do have a sufficient amount of time to review and respond and more further inform your application for the future. Thank you, Mr. Delasa. Okay. Any other questions or comments from the board? Can we ask for it to be submitted sooner so that they we can get everybody can get the is that just pushing it to no board's discretion within reason within reason. Remember there's

this board will never do anything uh that is unreasonable in my opinion. But it's just that that condenses the amount of time that the public can read the the engineer and the planners. Maybe the 20-day aspiration is something that uh can be used to gauge what the request might be from the board. Okay. 20 days. Any other questions or comments from board members? Mr. F. Are we going to hear the public's comments that they might have tonight? We we can't we can't if the matters carried with this is to give you what you so they could only meet privately as he offered

which they always can because uh land use is a often a collaborative process if those who are impacted by the proposed development can meet and resolve issues and uh that that's a good thing before it comes to the board. So it may be that this adjournment uh serves an actual beneficial purpose as well as simply just carrying the matter. Okay.

Sorry for the extra answer there, but I was so I think we put sufficient additional weight on Mr. Weber's shoulders and I hopefully he's heard clearly from the board the expectation we have of everyone that took time on this cold evening to come out here tonight um to hear that you didn't actually have to show up. But we're grateful you did. And if you have other, you know, friends or neighbors that are interested in offering their common suggestions of the application, start first with Mr. Weber. And uh what we'll motion for in just a moment here is um to carry the application without further notice to the January 26, 2026 meeting. So we have 7:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m. Same place, same time. Okay. Okay.

And if we don't get the information within said days, then it has to get Well, we'll well it I don't want to confuse anyone. It right now it's on for January 26th. Got it. If and when it changes for the members of the public, we didn't want

that's the intent. And yeah, if it were to be carried multiple times, we could re-exam. We could revisit that noticing, but um a one month carry is not exceptional in my opinion, in my experience. Um, and if anything, it's going to be an opportunity to improve this application. And we look forward to that uh v2 when it comes to us, assuming the motion will pass tonight. So, okay. Uh, with that, I'll invite a motion to carry uh Lynen Place RTR LLC and Steven Gianis, uh, 268270 Ashlin Road, application for minor subdivision to, uh, the planning board's January 26, 2026 meeting without further notice. So moved. A second. Second.

Okay. And Jessica will do a roll call, please. Vice Chair Balsson. Yes. Council member Hamlet.

Yes. Miss Bowen. Yes. Mr. Domo. Yes. Mr. Felmmet. Yes. Mr. Stern. Yes. Mr. Solo. Yes. Mr. Stuntton. Yes. Chairman Spur. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Weber. If anyone would like to join Mr. Weber out in the lobby there to pass share some business cards, make some introductions. I'm sure he'll be happy to uh shake your hand and start hopefully a conversation. What if we don't choose to discuss anything? You don't have to. You don't have to. I know. I got that. I can talk to whoever I want. Yeah. You can come back on the 26th and we'll welcome you to off your questions and comments as well. Okay. This is very Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for coming this evening. Yeah. Okay. Barbara, would you like to come forward? Or Donna, sorry. I'm sorry. Don't want to jump ahead. Okay. And then you can Good evening. Donna Gagen Patel, 115 Beakman Road in Summit. For those who don't know me, I am the chair of the Environmental Commission. And I'm going to be brief because we have our meeting at 8:00 upstairs. So trying to sorry

trying to get there. Um, I want to provide context though for the creation of the environmental resource inventory or ERRI that you will hear about tonight. Uh, the environmental commission is established by a New Jersey statute and one of our statutory roles is to prepare an ERRI and have this inventory or index for the city of its natural spaces. Summit's last ERRI was created in 2011. So, we knew for the past few years that we wanted to revise it to reflect the city's current resources. And if you've ever looked at an ERRI, it's a very detailed scientific document. It has granular information about our soil structure, our water sheds, you know, lots of different really granular information. So, we knew we wanted to hire consultants. This is not something that's in the wheelhouse of the current environmental commission members. And after discussing the idea with city staff and with the permission of common council in early 2024, we applied for a $10,000 grant from Sustainable Jersey and PSEG to update our existing ERRI. Sustainable Jersey awarded us the grant. Um, unfortunately, the time frame for the city request to move the grant funds into an account that we could use them from took eight months. It was just a very lengthy, long process. So we were kind of stalled while that happened. Uh we had identified our our fantastic consultants, the land conservancy and we were able to first meet with them in January of 2025. So following that we met with them and we got to work on the revision from the city. Aaron Shrager, Austo Domaso, and Rachel Deluca joined calls from the environmental commission. I participated in the calls along with um an environmental commission volunteer Shantal Landman who had volunteered to spearhead this back in May of 2024. The summit team was tasked with sharing photos and information from sources at a local level and reviewing maps to add local context such as stream names and

um points of reference that we wanted to make sure were on the maps. We also sought input from city departments including the city forester John Linston. Jin John Linson, excuse me. We asked for input at environmental commission meetings. We asked for it from Reeves Reed Arburedum from the Parkline Foundation and I think you'll be I hope happy to see the the final product. We're very pleased with it. I'm proud to introduce Barbara Davis from the land conservancy to show it to you and we would propose that the environmental resource inventory be incorporated in the future in the next P master plan revision process. So without further ado,

thank you. Welcome Barbara. Just before Barbara starts speaking, um, thank you for that great introduction and I'm glad we squeezed you in before 8:00 meeting. I'm sorry I didn't appreciate you heading upstairs. Um, we'll just note that and this is kind of an encouragement of the city solicitor. Um, this is an an endeavor that has undertaken with the consultant with this wonderful consultant and the environmental commission um to really help prepare the municipality especially for the substantial work we're going to be undertaking as part of the master plan re-examination next year. Um so this is you might see reference to this is draft language um for the purpose of the planning board and any policy uh any policy uh u references this may or may not have um anything of that kind of weight. Just I think we want to appreciate that this is a draft document has not yet been formally incorporated within a master plan. We're not adopting it this evening. Um and our role here is really just to help Donna make sure she can get her grant dollars. Uh which we want to be helpful there. Uh, but I suspect this is not the last time that we'll have an opportunity um to examine this information um but also ask questions and really facilitate a conversation that may see the RRI formally incorporated within the master plan re-examination in 2026. So, uh, we're mostly just listening tonight and we're grateful for that opportunity. Um, and we'll engage in greater depth come 2026 when we undertake the master plan re-examination. With that, Barbara,

all those caveats. Okay. So, my name is Barbara Heskins Davis. I'm a licensed planner. I work with the Land Conservancy of New Jersey. I've been there 27 years. Um, we've written over 200 land conservation plans. We've, um, write environmental resource inventories because we use them when we work with municipalities and counties to apply for funding to preserve land for open space and recreation. you need good information in order to write those grant applications and they're excellent tools for the planning board as they review um applications that come in. Your environmental commission will also use the environmental resource inventory in their role when reviewing site plan applications and it's a tool for the municipality for its residents to know what's in um your town and your city. So um the environmental resource inventory doesn't seem to work.

Sorry. That's okay. The whole thing's frozen. You want a moment to restart it or I'm going to unplug it. Take them over. Let's try again.

I can talk without the PowerPoint, but it's nice to be able to see it. Can you just try hitting escape real quick? The whole thing is you can't even visual. My apologies. Okay, take a moment.

All right, thanks Jessica. Okay, great. I really appreciate it. Okay, so the ERRI has 12 chapters. There's 18 maps. Um the chapters have to do with all different um you know sexual Can you bring the mic closer for anybody at home? Thank is that better?

Yeah. Okay, great. All right, so um the environmental resource inventory is composed of 12 chapters, 18 maps. Um it's based on best available data. As Donna mentioned, um the environmental commission provides a critical role in groundproofing the document and providing that local context. Um we're really limited as to what state and federal websites might have on them, what the municipality has in and of itself. And right now with the you know um political climate that we're in to be quite honest federal websites are changing or being taken down. So we're very careful about what we source when we source it. So if you use the document and in three months you go to fact check site and the site no longer exists or has that information I can guarantee you it had the information when we accessed it. And in the references section we note what month that we accessed it. So, I just want to reassure you of that. The environmental commission was really critical in their partnership in providing the information for the document and the direction. As Donna mentioned, you have a 2011 environmental resource inventory that was done in partnership with the Pacific River Coalition. It's a really good document and there's certain components of this information that just doesn't change. Your geology is not going to change. But to present it again and provide that context within an updated report is really important. We also strongly feel that climate change and um the ancillary impacts of it have been changing over the time since your 2011 um environmental resource inventory. And I write these reports because I'm convinced there's going to be funding tied to addressing issues that the report might raise with respect to heat resiliency and sustainability. And your community has been very active in the sustainable Jersey program. And as Donna

mentioned, this was funded through that program. So I'm just going to go quickly through the chapters um in order for you to get an idea of what's in there. Um the first chapter deals with land use land cover. summit is 86% um urban and of that 81% of it is um residential. So we go through what the different types of residential structures are um and how that compares to your forest and wetlands within buried within the land use land cover data. It's really interesting. The land use land cover data is provided through the DP and it's aerial photography that's been interpreted into what they call the Anderson land use classification. So you can look at those broad categories and you can sit back and you can say gh it says we're 86% urban. It doesn't really tell us anything. Why do I care? Well, the why do I care is when you start to dig into it, you know, it can really give you some interesting information. And one of the things it gives you is impervious surface coverage. So again, you can go back to the 86%, you know, urban, 81% residential. Uh, why do I care? You care because where is it the most densely um, you know, impervious? Where is it that you can make the most dramatic difference in your parks and recreation program if you put up additional trade shade trees? If you put in additional shade structures, where are people walking that they might get hot because there's so much pavement and there's not enough canopy coverage. Do you want to recommend to your downtown business district that put in more shade structures for people to eat outside, sit outside, you know, patronize this really great downtown that you have? This will give you that information. And this will also provide you with those tools that when there's funding

associated to underwrite the costs of those um improvements, you have the justification for it. And that's part of the value of putting this document together and having it ground proofed and having it cited. So we have this impervious surface coverage map in there. The data was flown in 2020. So if anything, you could say it's probably, you know, a little bit more impervious now. And it gives you that information about where it is. The darker the color, the more impervious you have all this mapping. You can really dig in. The second chapter goes into your vegetation. Summit. I was just telling Donna, our office had recommended to the New York Times that they um utilize the city of summit when they talk about the 50 states 50 solutions series that they're running to address um climate change um because of your tiny forest. And if you haven't watched Donna on YouTube when she's interviewed for CBS, you have to. It's fantastic. I watched it again today. Um and to see the change in time, the short amount of time since it was originally planted and where it's at now is truly remarkable. Um your seed library in the um municip in the municipal public library is a model for others. And in fact um we're working with the burrow of apacong in Sussex County which is a very small community much different than Summit. Um, it's a lake community and they have a sea library using one of their former cataloges in their public library and I felt really good about that because I'm sure they heard about it from Summit. Chapter 3 goes over wildlife and your wildlife species, threatened and endangered species habitat. It goes over deer management options and vernal habitats. Um, again, as Donna mentioned, the EC was really critical in providing those photographs of wildlife that's

seen within the city, um, and providing information for us. We did, um, submit an application to the DP to find out where your threatened endangered species habitat are found. Um you do have one um state endangered and federally endangered species whose habitat um is found within the riparian quarters and that's the Indiana bat. Um honestly that's not that unusual in this part of the state. Indiana bat does have a pretty large habitat range but it's great that your forests and your riparian quarters are providing that habitat. We did go through the hydraology and checked updated surface water quality measures. Um, your engineering department has an excellent job managing and identifying your storm water outfalls within the city of Summit. We use the Data for outfalls and Summit is the only one that we've worked with where the engineers said, "Don't really like what you're presenting there. it's not really accurate for you know the city of summit let me give you better mapping let me give you a better idea of what we do and it's really helpful and it's within this document so again if you need to know where your outfalls are and you want to know what storm water improvements that have been happened and what's in progress it's included within the city of summit's erri very helpful document um you're in three watersheds the upper pic river the Rawway River, Woodbridge Creek, and the lower Raritin River, which brings you kind of at that confluence of different water um watershed groups, which is great. Um New Jersey is a small state with a lot of different organizations who are vested in the success of our environment. So, you have, you know, the Pacific River

Coalition who worked with you on your original um ERRI. You have the Raway River Watershed. You have Reeves Reed Arboritum. Um you have the Raritin River Wershed Association. All interested in the city of Summit and its waters. And I think that makes you really lucky. Um and it provided some good information for the plan. What's interesting about the city, um, and I know this data is old and I use it and I cringe every time I do, but I can't help myself because I really think that it's still current even though the mapping is old. So, it's from 2005. Don't hate me, but you know, you have um five public wellheads at Blue Brook, and those are those blue dots on the map. The tiers are the rate of recharge, you know, kind of that time of travel to service those public community supply wells, which means for a city like Summit who has this um beautiful, you know, downtown development, these great neighborhoods that people live in, um they are vested in the success of that water supply. And I think that's a great public information tool for you. you know, there's all sorts of programs in terms of protecting your wildlife habitat and, you know, different types of planting and um it makes a difference in your city and that's what this map tells you regardless of the age of the data because it doesn't really change. We do go over the wetlands in the municipality. I'm going to tell you this chapter is just tough. It's um you know, you're at the planning board. every application that comes in, you know, if there's even a hint of something wet, I am 100% convinced that you asked for an LOI, which is going to be eons better than what I could write in this report. So, what you could take away from this

chapter is one, this is D flyover data, so not so accurate, and two, it gives you really good information about what a wetlands is. So, if somebody comes in and says, "I don't understand why you're making such a big deal about a wetland." Say to them, "Look at chapter five of your ERRI." It gives you a definition of what a wetland is. It gives you the information about what the riparian buffers are and why, and it gives you an idea of where to look for more information. So, use it as a as a tool for educating your public. Chapter six are your riparian areas and flood corridors. Um, again, this is federal and state data. I'm going to say it's, and this is universal for every town, is that it's it's kind of a guide, right? And it doesn't always work, especially in this age where you're having these highintensity short burst storms that are just wreaking havoc, I think, on our more urban um, populated areas of the state. we have water shooting down the streets that may or not be be coming from a a a creek but instead how the municipality was developed and um the storm water management. Now again your engineering department is on top of this and they did the storm water pollution plan in 2020 and they are actively working on addressing any of the shortfalls that were identified in that plan and that's discussed in this report. Um, we do we did talk to your engineer. We did um include more local information in this chapter. So again, it's a good resource for you. Geology and topography. As I mentioned at the beginning, your geology doesn't really change. Neither does your topography, but it gives you an idea of how your town what it's based on and what its slopes are. Again, for those steep slope ordinances, that's

important. Um, again, most of your steep slopes are in already preserved land. Um, but it's important to see where that is. You know, unfortunately, I really like this map. And the unfortunate part is I get it. I know how to read it. I'm really good at this map. And I've been told that it's not so easy to read. So, I want you to channel your inner Barbara and not dislike this map and understand that the closer the lines, the steeper the slope. Okay. And that the more yellow it is, the higher it is, you know. So, as it gets to that dark green, it's getting lower in elevation. Okay. So, your high point um is 500 ft west of I78 near um Rotary Dide. And the more severe slope is a found above Glenside Avenue, but the town has acquired that because they were concerned about steep slopes. So, um, again, I just and every trail map kind of has these slopes. So, again, that's kind of my bias. It's what I like to do, but again, this the closer the lines, the steeper the slope. Soil types, as Donna mentioned, it's really granular. This is a tough chapter to slog through, and I really like these reports. Um, it gives a lot of information about the different soil types within the municipality. You can tell from the map there's a lot of different soil series and it goes through the different characteristics for the soils. Again, this is very general. And you'll notice on this map that I've taken away the parcel lines and I've done that for two reasons. One, if we had parcel lines in here, the map would be illeible and you couldn't read it. I could read it. Number two is because of data confidence, right? is that soils the best way to do it is to you know dig a hole and see what the soil profile is. Um so the map is if you

put parcel lines in here you're giving it a degree of confidence that on parcel one the soil is this but on parcel two the soil is that whereas there is some variability in that soil profile. So this will give you a general indication of what your soils are which is helpful. Then the next couple of chapters deal with climate and climate change. Um deal with uh temperature scales and droughts and storms. We reference the county's hazard mitigation plan. We talk about what record highs are record lows are and where they're recorded. Um and for um Summit City, the the records are pretty strong. In chapter 10, we go over climate change. Again, it deals with trends and land surface temperatures. And you can go back to the first chapter where we talk about impervious um coverage. We do talk a lot about your sustainability efforts. Um within the the chapter 10, I like to be able to highlight what you've done here. If you want to use this plan um to get points from sustainable Jersey, it's considered a priority action and it will yield 20 points. When you've updated your master plan and this is in incorporated within that master plan, let Donna know so she can inform um sustainable Jersey and you can get your 20 points. This chapter is on air quality. New Jersey is within um standards for air quality. And chapter 12 goes over contaminated sites, non-homeowner um within the municipality. This is very much a picture in time. So you'll notice that the map and the report are both dated as to when the information was accessed from the state because this can change. People can resolve um you know their site issues. And with that I do really want to acknowledge the team that worked with us on the environmental

resource inventory. Donna is um outstanding and every town should have a Donna and those that don't are sad. Um, Chantel was great as a municipal volunteer to work on this and um, I pretty sure Austo worked with us on Aaron, our only liaison. So Aaron, he he's very humble. You know, I know mostly everywhere, but we did four iterations of this based on their comments. So what you're seeing here is in my office considered a final. um you know we are very pleased and appreciative of the opportunity to work with Summit and we look forward to the point where you're going to incorporate it into your master plan and um and get it out there.

Excellent. So with that, Donna has very graciously stayed. Um thank goodness. Uh and I'm here to answer any questions and I'd encourage you to put it up on your website. I know it's there. It's just a little buried.

Sure. So, we're going to hold questions at least for tonight only because we're going to re re-exam not reexamine but review and kind of offer some more dedicated time when we do answer that question is I wouldn't even say if but how we plan to incorporate the ERRI within the master plan. And I don't think it's so it's so simple as whether we incorporate it or not. It's how we use the richness of data that Barbara and the EC and the whole team here has compiled to inform the many many questions we're going to ask and answer as part of the the master plan process um which is coming next year. So just in a short period of time. So um for sure if you haven't already seen this document we'll make sure uh the board membership obviously has it but really even more importantly the broader public that will participate in the master plan re-examination process. So Barbara, we're incredibly grateful for joining us here. I'm glad we made it happen before the end of the year. Donna, any other pictures you need? Any other angles you want to make sure we get?

You got what you needed? Awesome. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for being here today. Impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll be in touch, I'm sure, very, very soon. All right. Amazing.

Um, so that checks the box on presentation. Um perhaps returning back to the one other item of the public agenda um that we do need to to tackle before we break into executive session. Um we are going to adopt a um assuming we have the support of the board our 2026 uh planning board schedule of meetings. Um it's important as everyone can appreciate uh that the public has a clear line of sight into when the planning board is meeting and we of course uh you know endeavor to prepare detailed and accurate agendas so they know what is being presented on a month-to-month basis. Uh but most everyone hopefully has had the opportunity to review this. Were there any questions or comments on um we'll call it the final draft before we hopefully uh make our motions and adopt it. Any questions, comments? Did we

I do have one comment. Go ahead. As you may notice on the draft there, uh the publish date column is empty. Uh that is left empty just because we're I believe the land use secretary includes a date that is 10 days before a minimum to advise the public that at a minimum of 10 days before both a uh notice to the paper and to the neighbors must be submitted. That is the publish date. That's why that's there. Any other questions, comments? All right. Wonderful. Uh, with that, I would ask for a motion to adopt our 2026 meeting schedule that's included in your board packet.

So moved. A second. A roll call vote if you would, Jessica. Vice Chair Bolson Alvarez. Yes. Council member Hamlet. Yes. Miss Bowen, yes. Mr. Domaso, yes. Mr. Felman. Yes. Mr. Stern. Yes. Mr. Salah. Yes. Mr. Stuntton. Yes. Chairman Spur.

Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing everyone throughout the year ahead here. Um, with that, uh, we intend now to break into executive session. As noted on the agenda, there are two items with which the board will discuss within those that executive session. The first being an attorney client privilege matter. uh the housing element and fair share plan mediation update. The second being uh confidential personnel matters review of board professional RFQ submissions. Um that second one uh is one we only see really once a year which is uh when we annually review uh proposals made by the likes of attorneys, planners and engineers that wish to work with and for us in the year ahead. Um so this is understandably a confidential discussion the board. Um, so understanding the scope of those conversations, um, and a resolution I believe had been prepared, um, or was least on hand, um, we'll ask for a motion to move into executive session, uh, to discuss these two identified items. But before we vote, Mr. Warner, do you have something to add?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to since we're not going to be reading the resolution into the record in its entirety and we do not have to. Just wanted to emphasize that the attorney client matters housing only fair share plan mediation update item is a pending litigation item. Pending litigation under subsection 7 being an exception to the open public meetings act permitting if not requiring us to go into executive session to handle that. and the confidential personnel matters uh equally is uh actually under subsection 8 uh of the open public meetings act for purposes of uh an exception uh from the open public meeting requirement and going into close session. So that is the legal basis for both of those which are memorialized in the resolution and I think I took up a little less time than reading the whole resolution so maybe it was worth it. Thank you. Perfect. Wonderful.

So with with that motion, second roll call. Motion to move into executive session to to discuss these two items. So moved. A second. Second. Second. And a roll call, please. Vice Chair Belson Alvarez. Yes. Council member Hamlet. Yes. Miss Bowen. Yes. Mr. Domaso. Yes. Mr. Felman. Yes. Mr. Stern. Yes. Mr. Salah. Yes. Mr. Stuntton. Yes. Chairman. Yes. Okay. All right, we'll be back shortly. Mr. Warner, you may join us for the first part. Thank you.

All right, Jay, are we recording? Sorry, we're good. Okay. Sorry. All right, so we've just concluded our close session discussion. Thank you all. Um, I think we need to vote to return back to public to public session. Is that correct? You could do one motion to uh Oh, reopen the open and and and close and motion to adjurnn.

Okay. So, we'll we'll do that for the sake of simplicity. We're going to ask for a motion to reopen the public uh session and in doing so acknowledge there's no further agenda items and accordingly close the meeting uh for this evening. So with that, do I have a motion to that effect? Is there a second? Second. And we'll want a roll call if we could. Vice Chair Balsen Alvarez, yes. Council member Hamlet, yes. Miss Bowen, yes. Mr. Damaso, yes. Mr. Felman, yes. Mr. Stern, yes. Mr. Salah, yes. Mr. Stuntton, yes. Chairman Spur, yes. And with that, happy new year. See everyone January 26, 2026 for the reorganization. All right.