West Windsor Planning Board feels left in the dark over redevelopment effort

New ad hoc committees do not include members as participants, chairman asserts

By: Katie Wagner
   WEST WINDSOR — The latest complaints about the township’s redevelopment process come from Planning Board members who say they’ve been left in the dark and want to play a greater role in determining the project’s direction.
   These opinions surfaced at the Wednesday night board meeting during discussions on ad hoc committees on financing as well as traffic and infrastructure for the train station area redevelopment project, detailed in a resolution draft from council.
   According to the draft, the finance committee would be comprised of the mayor or designee; two members of council; the township tax assessor; the township chief financial officer; J. Robert Hillier, the redevelopment planner hired by the township, or a designee; members of Economic Research Associates, consultants hired by the Hillier firm; and three members of the public. Criteria for establishing the traffic and infrastructure committee would only differ in that the township engineer and one or two members of Orth-Rodgers, a traffic engineering company hired by Hillier, would be included and the tax assessor and chief financial officer would be excluded.
   "Clearly the Planning Board is not a participant," Planning Board Chairman Marvin Gardner said. "I would have hoped council would have said, ‘Let’s put two Planning Board members on that committee, because it’s an important committee’. I think we need to provide our involvement for a Planning Board perspective."
   Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, a board member, said he wants to see the council and Planning Board working together on planning for the redevelopment project and proposed establishing a subcommittee that would include council members, Planning Board members and administrative representatives.
   "The Planning Board, from now on, should get more involved. I think all of us have got to be in the loop working together," Mayor Hsueh said.
   In an interview following the meeting, Mayor Hsueh added, "My feeling here is the Planning Board has never really been receiving a clear signal from council from the past month and a half indicating how to move on the redevelopment process."
   He said, however, the council itself did not have a clear direction of whether the project would continue during this time, which slowed the planning process.
   The Planning Board reached a general consensus that its role in the planning process for the redevelopment project needed to be clearly defined.
   "One of the things, I think we as a board need to do is define for ourselves, taking initiative in saying, ‘This is how we see ourselves in the pieces of the puzzle. This is how it should be,’" said Diane Ciccone, a Planning Board member.
   Another problem board members had with the draft was it called for separate committees, one for discussing finance and another for infrastructure and traffic for the project, categories which the board said seemed to depend on each other.
   "My thinking is if you have two ad hoc committees, they should go before another committee," said Chuck Chang, a Planning Board member. "It’s OK to have ad hoc committees, but whatever they see should come to the Planning Board. I think we should have the plans first, before the traffic and finance committees meet."
   Discussion of the topic concluded with the board authorizing its attorney, Gerald Muller, to write a memo to the council, asking it to include members of the board on the ad hoc committees and to meet with the board to discuss how decisions were going to be made on the redevelopment project, including the Planning Board’s role, and integrating the board’s functions into the whole planning process.
   Mr. Gardner said the board’s hope is that the board and council will meet prior to Oct. 11, the date of the first of three joint Planning Board and council meetings that will include presentations from Mr. Hillier and other consultants.
   Councilwoman Linda Geevers attended the meeting on behalf of council. During an interview following the discussion, Ms. Geevers said, she supported the idea of having the council meet with the board to discuss sharing the process and including board members on the ad hoc committees was something the council should seriously consider.
   Council President William Anklowitz said he didn’t know what board members who thought council had excluded them from the decision-making process were talking about.
   "They (the board) could go out and have one or more Planning Board meetings to discuss redevelopment. I can’t schedule their meetings or put things on their agendas. I would really like to know what they think of all this," he said.
   Also discussed at the board meeting was the removal of two items from the agenda labeled under "ordinance review." The ordinances called for zoning district changes to two areas of the township, which Mr. Gardner said he understood would affect thousands of homes.
   Mr. Gardner said residents of the affected homes should be notified before reviewing the ordinances, even though the board does not historically provide notices to individual property owners for zoning changes of this nature.