Planning Board Meetings - Regular Meeting

Mike, you don't have an agenda?

Oh, that was the packet.

That packet didn't move over.

That's your packet, Mike.

Welcome.

All right, Carrie, as soon as Mike is seated.

Celeste, I was absent, but I was online.

Are we, Carrie, are we live? We're live. Okay, we are live.

Okay. Okay. good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the sparta township planning board thank you to those joining us here and online for the record this meeting is being held on july 15 2026 at 703 pm in the sparta township municipal building located at 65 main street sparta new jersey and the live stream can be viewed on youtube at www.youtube.com slash at sparta twp please note that adequate public notice of this meeting was given in accordance with the open public meetings act No new business to be conducted after 9.30 p.m., and the meeting will end promptly at 10. Let us begin with a salute to our flag.

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.

Carrie, would you please call the roll?

Here.

Here. Here. In Dunbar here here.

Here.

Here here. Here.

Here.

Here. Okay, we will move into the approval of meeting minutes for June 17th, 2026.

I will start to my right. Mr. Dunbar, do you have any comments or questions regarding these minutes? I do not. Mr. J?

Yes, I had one. I'm trying to pull up my notes here.

Ron, speak into the microphone, please. Okay, yeah, I've got one.

I just got to find my notes here. It was towards the end where they talked about what was discussed and the 1 thing that, um, wasn't discussed. I didn't see the notes. I want to make sure I got into the record. Was that, um, when we talked about the building size. Um, the possibility that, um, going with a smaller size building. Could encourage the, um, developers to subdivide or in plan development. You don't don't even have to subdivide. So what you end up with is the same square footage, just more buildings. So I wanted to put that a comment to that in the notes and I apologize. I think we just got him yesterday. I just saw it tonight. Um, so maybe just a simple statement that says that, um. When the board discuss it also discuss was the possibility of small, smaller square footage could encourage developers to build more buildings.

So, that's relative to the mass blank consistency review for the, um. Development district. So, uh, yeah.

All right, so the economic development district portion is section 18, 435. okay.

So, on these minutes, it would be.

On page 3 page 3, right down towards the bottom, right?

Right before public comments.

3. To build, um, additional buildings. Which would yield the same amount of square footage.

All right, and. No, I'm good. Thank you. Okay.

Um, just 1 quick note, I was absent, but I was, I attended online. So, I just want that noted. I was not physically here, but I was on the. Dial in, so. don't want it looking like i missed a meeting because i attended the meeting just now okay so you were in attendance by phone yes okay actually by youtube what i think we did i believe i believe we did yeah

I am pretty sure, but no, no, because that's when the baby was born.

You want. Oh, no, that's right. You were on YouTube.

I was YouTube because I couldn't physically get here. Oh, OK. So you're saying that you watched it. OK, so you viewed it. You weren't on the phone. I couldn't.

comments but I just want I don't want it to look like I just skipped it all together so maybe you could just write virtual or something I don't know what you want to write but or just leave it I don't care but I would just say that Christine Quinn observed the public hearing the virtual just short and sweet perfect thank you so where it says on a roll call absent I would just put virtual

Okay, moving forward the details where, um. Joan asked if that could attend a meeting. They're left out the details of it and that carried forward to our council meeting. I'll speak to it later on, but I don't know if there's a lot of other comments in that section that are not in these minutes.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's just really sanitized here, and it did carry to council, of which I'm going to bring it back up here tonight just to carry it back down as far as council business, if that's okay.

Can we defer it until that gets incorporated?

I think so, Joan, because I don't think those comments are representative of what you were trying to say, correct? Correct.

I was going to bring that up as well.

I'm going to be honest with you at this point. With as many comments as are being made, I'm not exactly sure or confident that this would go through with a positive vote.

I agree.

Anyway, at this stage. So let's just finish with the comments and then and then we'll add them now.

I'll go back and add them because I did go back and I'll listen to the YouTube again just to make sure what was said, but I'll put something in there.

Yeah, and the purpose of these minutes, I understand minutes are trying to condense and consolidate to the material facts of what's been discussed. But somewhere in all that dialogue, there are some additional facts that are important. And they get not whitewashed, but they kind of get like – it's hard to judge what's important and what's not important. So, I mean, a full transcript of the – Ken, this is a question for you. Is a full transcript of the minutes should just be documented and this should be a cover, like a summary of it? Or – Or do we try our best to condense and consolidate? Like, what's the procedure and the purpose of the minutes?

Well, honestly, there's nothing that says that you... Because it's recorded in live, there's nothing that says when you get to it, you can't put a little more in there and then refer to the time point in the YouTube video. So if anybody wanted to go back and do it, you could write the time point, you know, at this point in the meeting. And actually... There is a lot that's discussed, so maybe moving forward 1 of the things the planning board wants to think about is including those at mentioned points in the minutes to say this was discussed at. Minute it's not a work or whatever. No, because you're watching it anyway.

Terry, can you speak into the mic? Let's do this, gang. The minutes are to reflect the general understanding. However, there's nothing wrong with there's a specific title or topic to give more specific reference to. So if there is during the approval process, you want clarity. It's important to your volunteers are giving your time. You want to say this point is important. There's nothing wrong with you reflecting that in the minutes. Again, if the let's say the virtual world becomes corrupt and you can't get a type copy, the minutes would be the best evidence of the hearing. So there's nothing wrong with what everyone is saying. They are supposed to be general, but there's nothing wrong with giving specific references on important topics. So I think we're saying the same thing.

Yeah, they need to capture the intent, right? And the intent was not captured.

That part of it, Mr walls wasn't the only one about it. No, I also wrote about. Into the Mike, I also voted no on that subject. Mr walls, I'm not on here anywhere.

Mm. Hmm.

Motion to have a deputy. Air Sylvester have a conversation with Mr. I voted down on that.

So. at the very least the boat should be properly memorialized the link for the youtube because i watched that before i went back and reviewed it made sure that that vote was very well documented i was there and i'm not listed anywhere here i did vote correct

So where's that, Ernie? What section is that?

Last page. Public session. Opposed? It was Wallace.

It was also myself.

Can you put the mic in front of you?

I said over the next couple of days, I will amend the minutes and I will send them back out to all the board members.

Okay, so let's finish getting through comments. So, Mr. Wallace, do you have anything?

I don't truly have much except for what we're discussing. If there's a point that you want to document from a previous meeting, you should be speaking that point and that timeline and the date of that meeting at that moment. It shouldn't be on Carrie to go and research three meetings back. If you have a point that it's on this meeting day at this time, you should bring it up then so she could document it at the current meeting. That's all I have to say.

Okay. I do have a comment, but just following up on Mike's that would mean we'd have to get the minutes before like the day before because there just isn't enough time to do that like i sent you something today because i only got to look at it today normally if you have it a couple days before you can use the weekend or whatever and then we can provide these comments and not have to do as much here so um when the packet goes out on friday If there's anything that should be included, it should be included by that date or maybe just not do it. So that's one suggestion. Anyway, my comments kind of follow what Mike was saying, and it's right above the public where Ron was putting a comment in there. And it says, like, notable concerns included reducing size of buildings, ratables, campus-like settings, and number of dock doors. It doesn't really tell the picture. And so I sent something to Carrie today because, you know, I was conflicted on this. I thought there were some things that were consistent with the master plan. There were some things that weren't. i made the motion i probably it's my fault i made it the wrong way i should have said wholly consistent or wholly inconsistent or something like that but anyway i just wanted to get on the record some of the thoughts that i expressed during that meeting so my recommendation was to replace that last paragraph at the bottom of page three right before the comment public comments section with the following there was a lengthy discussion among board members With regard to the 1984 master plan, Ms. Fuhrman indicated that one of the things that she struggles with are that parts of the ordinance are consistent with the master plan and other parts are not consistent. She pointed out that it is consistent with the section that states locate future development in areas that avoid excessive congestion, parking problems, and urban development densities. It is also consistent with the section that recommends that limitations be placed on project size and scale. A 75,000 square foot warehouse would promote the campus-like setting, avoid excessive congestion and densities, and place a limit of five dock doors, thereby limiting a lot of the excessive traffic as compared to a 175,000 square foot warehouse. You don't have to agree with the thought, but that's what was said. And that was what I was trying to bring out. So I wanted to incorporate that.

Well, equally important, I need to speak to that then, because if you recall, at some point when we were trying to dissect and we were starting to split the type of vote we wanted to take, whether the bottom line is I deferred it right back to Ken as far as what is our intent? Is it? Uh, is it consistent or non consistent with the current master plan? And none of that is reflected in these minutes. So, I think we just, we just need to maybe scrub this and get a little bit more granular and detailed with with the discussions that were on hand. Your point, my counterpoint, and how we got to vote. The whole vote of that, we were talking about splitting or considering the good elements, the consistent elements versus the non-consistent elements versus our purpose and intent of voting in entirety.

Yeah.

So I think it's important that, you know, for all of us here, that the record's straight on what we were voting on that night.

And part of the problem, not our issue, but is that we had three different zones all incorporated in one ordinance, and that made it difficult. And then we were down to consistent versus inconsistent, but with the C1H, we said wholly consistent. So there is a little gray area, but it's a learning process.

And do you agree with what we're saying? Yes. Thank you.

So, given everything that we're discussing and everything that we're hearing, I actually am going to make a motion to table the approval of these minutes, um, to our next meeting. Can I get a 2nd?

2nd.

Okay, uh, record record show that Joan 2nd did and. Uh, do we need a roll call? No, we have a roll call please. We do a roll call.

This is the carry the minutes. Carry minutes.

can i vote on these because i wasn't in attendance you were virtual i was so i can okay yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes okay so can i just point of order um ken

This is not an application, so I don't think it's a big deal. But when we've done applications before and somebody watched it virtually, there was a document that had to be signed, you know, just verifying that.

She will sign the document so that she can potentially discuss it.

That's what I was going to suggest.

Good idea. That's not a problem.

That'll be definitely part of the... Yeah, just send it to me.

Great. Thank you.

Okay, moving forward to resolutions.

Our 1st resolution is for nickel lock, paving stones, LLC, application number 26 dash 739, 482 houses, corner road block 1, 6005 lot, 16 zone 1 zone, amended site plan with variances.

Yes, Board, if you recall, this was the silos after the project was built. So they came and explained the reason for it. It was approved and in the resolution, and thank you, Ron Day, gave me some comments. There was actually a waiver as to additional parking, which I added, and I had made copies that I left on the dais here tonight for you. there's an issue as to the silo heights uh joan firman brought to my attention so i'm going to confirm that exact issue of the silo heights with dave our engineer to just make sure of that i did already change and add ron day's comments of the additional parking ron had also clarified that copsco who was the planner was a ms i did have it as a mister originally