Borough seeks to maintain current status in state plan
By Audrey Levine Staff Writer
Officials approved a $30,000 contract as an investment in maintaining state aid through the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.
Manville is preparing its plan to maintain its center designation with the State of New Jersey’s Office of Smart Growth, a designation that can help draw state grants to the borough. It recently awarded the contract to Schoor DePalma Engineers and Consultants, of Manalapan, to assist in the drafting of the plan.
The resolution to award the contract was unanimously approved at the Borough Council’s Aug. 13 meeting.
According to Jamie Sunyak, project manager for the consultants, Manville submitted an application to Somerset County for a Municipal Planning Partnership Grant to fund the project.
Manville was initially designated as a center in June 2000, Ms. Sunyak said, and is now looking to renew that designation before it expires in January 2008. The center designation is used to determine the best areas for growth in the town.
Ms. Sunyak said working toward preparing the plan endorsement will prove beneficial when the borough looks to apply for state funding in the future.
”The extent of the benefits of the designation is the reaffirmation of the existing center and to assist the town in being prioritized for grant funding,” she said. “Manville will be in a better position when it is against other towns that are not center designated.”
According to Chris Donnelly, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Manville must submit a comprehensive plan that reviews past and future zoning and planning measures, in addition to the municipality’s land use regulations.
Ms. Sunyak said the first step is to form an advisory committee of Planning Board and other members, all appointed by the mayor, who will begin to put together a municipal self-assessment report and community inventory. The report will look at population, housing, recent developments and other aspects of the town itself.
”This report will then be given to the state’s Office of Smart Growth,” she said. “State agencies will review and provide their own assessments.”
Ms. Sunyak said these assessments will include reports from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Transportation, among others.
Once that is complete, she said, the borough will set up public workshops to allow the residents to provide input on the recent developments in the town. Dates for these meetings have not yet been set.
According to Ms. Sunyak, the final step for the consultants is to assist in putting together a memorandum of understanding and an action plan, in which Manville provides a detailed timeline of how it will go about undertaking any suggestions from the Office of Smart Growth.
”They will look at updating the Master Plan, and looking at zoning and conservation plans,” she said. “The next step after that is for the Office of Smart Growth to endorse the town getting the designation.”
Ultimately, Ms. Sunyak said, the state will determine if the municipality will be granted the designation once again.
According to Mr. Donnelly, the Smart Growth program itself is designed as a way to slow development and eliminate problems that result from heavy development, including traffic and pollution. Among other goals, it attempts to protect New Jersey’s natural resources, develop sustainable policies for future development, preserve rural areas, stabilize taxes and protect quality of life.
In addition to having a center designation, there are five different categories the town can fall under: urban, regional, town, village and hamlet. Manville was grouped into the town section in the past, which applies to areas with residential neighborhoods, as well as “a mixed-use core, offering locally oriented goods and services,” according to the New Jersey Office of Smart Growth Web site.
”Urban centers are the state’s big cities,” Mr. Donnelly said. “They range down from there through regional centers, towns, villages and, finally, hamlets.”
According to the Web site, there are many advantages to towns being given a center, or any other, designation by the state, including better access to grants and other opportunities. These municipalities often gain higher priority when applying for funding from state agencies over those without the designation.
”The goal is to help towns plan to take advantage of assets, meet the goals and policies of the state plan through local action and align the efforts of the state’s departments and agencies to support appropriate local efforts,” Mr. Donnelly said. “It directs growth and development to the existing places in the state that have the infrastructure and other support services to accommodate the development.”