Planning Board - Regular Meeting

[Music] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Connection. We got a really bad connection here. I don't know why connection going on. Those are things that I would not in the midst

Miss Earl here, Mr. Legatti here, board attorney Mark, uh, board planner John Barry here, board secretary, mlando, present. Thank you. You all rise. To the flag of the United States of America and to the stand, indivisible public hearing on TV2-01. I'll ask members of the governing body be sat down from this hearing. Will the applicant and any experts please step up? Uh are we Darren step up since we're already down one member? Right. Are we okay? Yeah. Please applicants please step up and be sworn in. Good evening. You want to sit? No. The attorney, please swear testimony. The mic, please. Can you raise your hand? Uh, can you state your name? Susan Viniolo. Do you swear to uh that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth? I do. Thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Anthony. I'm representing the applicants in connection with this application. Uh Susan will be our only witness. We're uh hoping to have Mr. Ludwick, but he has a medical emergency tonight, so he's not available. My understanding is that board members already have copies of the plans attached. If you want to see him

in more detail, we can have file Martin. It's necessary. If anyone wants to see mark, if not the plans that you have and we will have them available for further inspection. I'm just going to have you speak into the microphone so everybody can hear you. Who? Whoever is speaking, we're speak. Just make sure we can hear you in the microphone. Please step up when you're speaking. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. Not close enough. Susan get closer. Can you tell us where you live? 207 Washington Avenue. with uh my husband Peter and three of our four children at this point. How long have you been here? 18 years. And can you describe the house for us in terms of its location with respect to Washington Avenue and Wilson? So it is a corner lot. So it fronts on uh Main Street. Um and the side the driveway is on North Wilson. So it does have two front yards within the house. Can you tell us if you're facing the house from Washington Avenue? It is in the back right corner. So, the wall is facing uh I'm sorry, North Wilson Avenue. Tell the size of the kitchen. Oh, I can. I've been cooking in it for many years. Um our house is over 100 years old. We're not exactly sure. Um but it is very small by modern standards. It's approximately 130 square ft and it is only 9 1/2 ft wide. And this application also includes a uh an addition and purpose of expanding what's called the power bathroom application. Correct. Existing bathroom. I don't have the answer to that question. Small.

Is it more than 6t wide? No. Is it? No. has one sink. It has one sink. Correct. And this application seeks to also make that correct. Now with respect to this being required to have two main so that we are in compliance there. It's 25.35 ft from Washington Avenue. This is the existing instance between Wilson and 8.95 ft. So already non. So with respect to the issue, what what's being proposed in terms of going towards the basis of uh 4T out towards uh North Wilson with one um 6ft portion that's going to uh hopefully extend 6 ft uh so that we can fit a breakfast nook in within the kitchen. Within the kitchen. Okay. And it's also going to expand uh to the rear of the house as well. Correct. Correct. There's no bar. What's that? No, that's an 8ft um twotory addition off the back of the house um extending towards the garage. So that will not affect. Okay. Two. Two stories. So the intention is also to do bedroom upstairs. Correct. To have um a guest room with an attached bathroom for visiting family. Now the opposite side of the house has a has a side. Correct. Correct. What's what preventions you going to the side? Two things. The first is that the kitchen and bathroom are already located on the north Wilson side. So moving them would not be practical and would be very expensive. We also have a beautiful 100-year-old weeping cherry tree in our sideyard. and we have since we live there done a number of projects and we

have always tried to preserve the tree. So we don't want to expand and we don't want to do anything that would damage the tree and we're definitely not cutting it down. So a couple more questions with respect to the Wilson Wilson side location. Is there curving there? No. The street recent the street was recently done by by the correct it was re it was repaved. Yes. When they repaved it there was no side. Correct. So the only thing that's at that location is your sideyard approximately. Correct. That's the only thing that Okay. Now with respect to uh this this this property obviously we can't do the house, right? So the side road is an existing problem with respect to this with respect to u adjacent properties. Is there anything that any property that would come close to this property's your addition location? No, there are two houses across the street, but it should not have sight lines. I I'm not sure. Correct. Yes. I don't have any further questions members or actually professionals first, please. Sure. Uh good evening. Thank you for the testimony. Uh could you just confirm I believe it's shown on the architectural plans that the finish of the addition will match the the siding of the existing building? Everything will match including the design, the roof shingles and the siding. Okay. And the the fence that is located on the Wilson Avenue side that will remain or is that going to be relocated? Parts of it will have to go and um it will be replaced. Okay. Yes. Thank you. In in looking at the plans, it appears that only about a quarter of the existing home is currently within that

setback, meaning that most of the home is is closer than 25 ft to Wilson. And even on the back part, the uh existing uh garage structure is set back. Yes. Right. Okay. Um, there was a picture that was included that showed a fence alongside that back. Um, would it be the proposed addition? Is it all the way to what the fence is currently? Is it partway? Do you No, it it's Yeah, it will extend towards the garage, but no, it's not going to get anywhere near the fence. I mean, on the Wilson app side, there's a little bit of a fence about three doors. Just from a a visual, I wanted to understand how far out the the four feet would be. Is it the whole fence? Is it part of the fence? I'm honestly not sure. It will the fence. It's definitely going to be past the fence because I think the fence Yeah. Yeah. The fence. Correct. So, it will go further than the fence. And there's there's a sidewalk in the front on Main Street. Correct. There's a brick walkway, but no sidewalk on Wilson. Thank you. I uh I may have misunderstood, but house is only 8 ft from the street. Almost nine. Almost nine. And you want to add four? Correct. So your house would be five feet from the street. Correct. Which would pretty much leave no room for a sidewalk. There is no sidewalk. Not now. Uh, okay. I just wanted to I thought maybe I misunderstood. You want your the the existing sidewalk on Main Street though is a budding Main Street, right? There's not a grass. No, in between. Washington Avenue, not Washington. Sorry. I'm sorry. Washington. I

apologize. Yes. It's like the second second. I have a question and I think it might clear up some of the uh issues. Okay. Um, so I understand that it's proposed to be 4.95 ft uh without the breakfast nook to the sidewalk that doesn't exist, but more or less like a sidewalk right away. Like if I look at the front of the house, even there the sidewalk is is further away from that property line. There's like a grass nook that I suppose is more of that devil strip or whatever you know term you want to use. My question to you is if there was a curve on the street or wherever that asphalt starts, right? What is that distance between that asphalt and the property line? Cuz I I don't see that on any I think we have I don't we have an older survey that we submitted. Trying to see if it shows the existing property number. I don't think it shows dimensions in the one that I have. So, I'll copy the service. I mean, if if this is to scale, which it should be, I mean, I'm ballparking it here, but it looks like it probably be 15 ft. I'm I'm doing that from an aerial photograph as well, but I don't have we have an old survey and I don't think I'm not sure the survey goes beyond the existing dwellings. So, you're right. We're going to probably have to ballpark that. So, just just looking at the the survey and the plans that were provided, the survey ends at the right ofway line. It doesn't doesn't show us the grass strip that's within the right of way between that line and the paving edge. From the architectural drawing, the plot plan that was provided, I would ballpark

it at about 8 ft. Okay. So from the house today to where the pavement on the street actually begins is in the neighborhood of 16 17 ft something like that. So there's a distinction between setback from the property line and set back from the side of the road. Yeah, thank you for clearing that up. So the point is that there's quite a bit of room. It's not just potentially 5T just what I know. So given that this is a corner lot, one could conrue that maybe there's a little bit of a hardship because of the fact that there are two front buildings. And I've seen other cases where someone wanted to put a fence on their side, but their sideyard wasn't really a front yard. So they had to go to board and get that figured out. Uh but for the R10 zone, just just to be clear what um the numbers are and you know the number. So um the front yard setback is 25 ft. Correct. And the sideyard setback is is uh 12 ft, right? So the the two sideyard setbacks would be 24 ft. Correct. And we have more than 20 a lot more than that footage on the opposite side where the tree is located. That's a very large area. Okay. The problem in terms of the legal hardship, we can't move the building. There's already an existing hardship and we can't we can't move the kitchen within the building. So, what we're trying to do by the application is to take advantage of the existing location with minimal impact upon anybody in the neighborhood by coming directly towards the street. Can you remind us um what the previous application was for with regard to the garage?

So you have you have the the resolution. Yeah, we have a copy of the resolution. Trying to get to the part where the board makes its findings. Okay. Uh it was to allow the construction of the two-car garage uh with a with a sideyard setback variance again uh because the the it's an it was an existing structure where it was located the garage and it was simply knocked down and rebuilt within the same footprint. Within the same footprint. Yeah. Okay. So there was a pre-existing non-conforming. Yeah. Pre-existing non-conforming garage at that but it was garage is a generous description. It was it was uh it was wood in a location. What was the date of that? That resolution is dated if they put it on the beginning. The hearing was held on September 4th, 2019. So, the resolution must have been October October 2nd. Thank you. I I have a quick follow-up question and it's more of a If anybody has the answer, it's kind of an opinion, but if there was ever a sidewalk placed on Wilson Avenue, it from what I can tell from one photo right off the cover here, looks like utility lines are on that side of the right. So, I imagine the poles closer to the street, which would potentially put a sidewalk closer to the house than it would right up against the road. Um, I know it's a lot of what ifs, but I'm curious if you would feel comfortable having potentially only a 3ft distance from the breakfast, which may have a window to

the side. It's awfully close, which is something um and and to follow up that does anybody else have a sidewalk in that particular neighborhood that close to the their actual house? So, I don't think it would bother me mostly because we are right on Washington Avenue. So, our our living room is on Washington Avenue. We regularly sit there and you know there's people walking by. It's it's a busy street so we're used to it. Um and the second question is, are there any sidewalks on that street on Wilson? Not until further down. No, actually, no. I don't think I don't think there are any on Wilson. No, there aren't all the way down. There are no sidewalks anywhere on Wilson. Okay. And I think that's why that's why I asked the question about when the when the burrow decided to improve the street by paving it, they didn't put a curb or require sidewalk. So I think it's the intention to pretty much leave it the way it is because it is an older area community. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. I can tell you that I walk that street all the time. There is no there are no sidewalks area and that piece of grass that is from the street to the side to the I guess your fence is huge. I think 8 ft was small. I think it's more than 8 ft. So there's plenty of room for a sidewalk. Thank you. That's all we have. Mr. Ch. Thank you. Before I sit, I just want to say please excuse my hat. I had some surgery on Monday. So, we're just covering up some stitches and bandages. [Music] I told her that she needed ketchup. So, I see where the

kitchen. So I plan on putting much there or on the side around the the Yes, definitely. There is there now so obviously that will have to go but we will replace it. Sure. Absolutely. If there are no more questions like question and close the public portion. Any other questions? If not, close the public. Excuse me. Public portions closed. Board members, anyone? Make a motion. Don't jump at one. Sure. I'd like to make a motion to uh approve uh the bulk variance as uh described in the application. Second. Second, please. Mr. Cook I chair LeBlanc I Mr. Merrens I Mr. Rabba I Mr. Ruth I vice chair Shakaren I'd just like to say a couple things before I vote um and and that is that one concern I have is that very

short and so I am concerned about that but I do realize that the side is um so that they can consider consider that Wilson and Mr. Mr. Dan Murray approved. I'm sorry. What? Yes. Okay. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you for your attention. Congratulations. Thank you. Good luck. There you go, guys. Thank you. Tonight board discussion public hearing for the fourth round housing development and fair share plan board discussion and public hearing. I'll ask our board planner John Barrett to lead discussion. Good evening everyone. Um, we have a housing element and fair share plan that's been distributed that's been on

notice to the public for uh last 10 11 days or so. And we're here tonight to review that comes from the statewide obligation. That number is calculated according to a formula calculated according to a formula that's been based on different ways of doing it over the years and it's been updated and in the most recent 2024 legislation um the state the the state legislature basically told the department of community affairs here's here's how you go about doing this and you're going to give each town a number and so the number overall is based on the growth of households in the state and then an assumption that a certain number of those households represent people with low and moderate incomes. And just by way of that terminology, low and moderate income refers to a percentage of the area median income. And the region, part of the reason why the state gets split into regions is that the economic factors in different parts of the state are different. You know, Bergen County is different from Salem County. And so um the state gets split up into these six different regions and there's uh an area median income for each region and within that it gets broken down into moderate, low and very low income. So households that make a certain amount fall into those thresholds for um just by you know we're in housing region three in Middle Sex County that includes Middle Sex, Somerset, and Hunter. And recently updated 2025 numbers tell us that the median income for a fourperson household. So just kind of your median median household is $153,000 a year, give or take. So that would make moderate income which is 80% of that 122,000 and change. Low income would be 76,000 and very low income would be

46,000. So that's just the basic parameters that we're working in to talk about affordable housing. You know, these are these are different income brackets for different housing types. Um and those scale based on household size in addition to within those different breakdowns. So smaller households, smaller income, so forth. So we in the bureau have um a number that was provided as this share of the region 3 obligation and it was based on several factors. The availability of developable land uh it was based on the growth in non-residential tax ratables over um population changes. So uh and and income the uh number that the bureau adopted was 51 units. So the fourth round is what we're in now, what we call for for housing. Uh the the bureau has an obligation to plan for 51 affordable housing units as what's called its perspective need. And perspective meaning starting from the middle of this year 2025, 10 years forward. That's the housing round is a 10-year period. And so perspectively over the next 10 years, we're meant to provide the opportunity to develop those 51 affordable housing units through different mechanisms that we'll talk about in a minute. So that's the number that we're looking at as as part of our planning work here. In addition to the perspective need, there's another category that's called present need in the legislation, which doesn't refer to something we have to do right now. kind of implies that present need we have to deal with it immediately. What it's really referring to is it households exist today that may be deficient in some ways and are likely to be occupied by folks with low and moderate incomes to this as the rehabilitation need. So we're not building new units, we're helping rehabilitate existing unit income households. So it's two two

different numbers, two different approaches to satisfying the obligation. So that number for the burrow for the fourth round is 13. So that's that's our our numbers. That's where we are. So in dealing with planning for the fourth round, we actually had to go back and kind of adjust what we had done previously, rounds of housing planning because avenue is still sitting there as a pile of rubble and not as housing units that were planned however many years ago originally. So, the most recent housing element and fair share plan that the burough adopted that the planning board adopted was back in 2019. And that plan came about as a result of basically a judge saying, "Here's where we've landed on all of this Fort Avenue business for now. The town has to has to deal with