By: Cara Latham
UPPER FREEHOLD A state Superior Court judge in Monmouth County ruled Monday that, with the exception of three expert reports and testimony pertaining to them, the township Planning Board can only consider information it received before April 26, 2006 when deciding on a warehouse application on Meirs Road.
Superior Court Judge Daniel Waldman handed down the decision the day before the Planning Board was scheduled to continue a hearing on the application for Freehold-based developer JAC Raw Land Co. LLC.
The developer hopes to build a warehouse on Meirs Road. The proposed warehouse, located in a zoned highway commercial, would be 13,490 square feet, with 750 square feet of office space on the first floor and 4,450 square feet on the second floor.
The ruling now means that changes made to the developer’s application including to its environmental impact statement and to the method it would use to deal with stormwater runoff cannot be used by the Planning Board to make a decision on the warehouse.
Opponents of the proposed warehouse the Meirs Road Residents Against Warehousing live either adjacent to the warehouse site or across from it.
Phil Sinicropi, one of the Meirs Road residents, said Monday after Judge Waldman issued the order that he felt vindicated. The reports done by his group’s environmental consulting firm Princeton Hydro consistently found areas where JAC was not complying with the law, and JAC used that to continue to make changes to its application, Mr. Sinicropi said. He said he felt the board’s attorneys continued to give the Planning Board bad advise and allowed the developer "to go to school on our findings."
"In my opinion, if (JAC) wanted to put the best foot forward, they should have done it when they first applied," he said. "And it cost me and the residents of Meirs Road to teach them how to do it right, and they still haven’t done it right. It’s a beautiful victory for us, and it’s a beautiful victory for the residents of Upper Freehold Township."
In the court order, Judge Waldman states that when considering the application, the Planning Board should only use oral testimony and exhibits from before the board reach its April 26, 2006 decision to approve the application.
The order also allowed for two expert reports prepared in February by Princeton Hydro, LLC and one expert report prepared in March by Gelled, Sive and Co.
From the get-go, the proposed warehouse faced opposition from the Meirs Road residents. After the Planning Board approved the application in April 2006, the residents filed a suit in Superior Court in December, claiming that JAC failed to comply with two township ordinances.
First, the residents argued that the developer’s environmental impact statement was not submitted 10 days prior to the public hearing on the applications, as required by the township. Second, they claimed that substantive and procedural violations (including failure to comply with township stormwater regulations) occurred throughout the approval process for the preliminary and final site plan evaluation for the warehouse facility.
However, Superior Court Judge Alexander Lehrer, in January, looked only at the EIS claim that it was not submitted at least 10 days prior to the vote and remanded the application back to the board. He had found issue with the fact that the Planning Board had held two hearings on JAC’s application, in March and April of last year. A vote was taken that same April, when the board approved the application, and a resolution of approval was signed the following month.
JAC had submitted its EIS documents to the Planning Board in February. Township Engineer Glenn Gerken reviewed both the EIS and the Stormwater Management Report and sent his comments to the Planning Board in April. He found those EIS documents to be acceptable, but mentioned that JAC should consider updating the stormwater management system to conform to the current state stormwater requirements, even though the requirements were not explicitly required.
At the time the plans for the warehouse were originally approved by the township, the stormwater ordinance had only applied to residential developments. Mr. Gerken previously said that the ordinance is in effect now for both residential and commercial sites and if residents had appealed the site plans now, a Superior Court judge could have ruled in their favor. JAC agreed to comply with those stormwater requirements in April of this year.
The residents claimed the Planning Board should have denied the application during its last hearing on June 26 because the developer has continued to make changes in its application, instead of having all of its information together to present to the board in order to prove its case. They claimed JAC modified its EIS, and changed the method it would use to deal with stormwater runoff which residents claimed still didn’t prevent their drinking water from being contaminated if the warehouse is approved.
Stuart Lieberman, an attorney for the residents, said then that he felt Judge Lehrer who sent the application back to the board didn’t give permission for JAC to modify its application.
Planning officials said then that it was normal operating procedure for any planning board to request more information, and that JAC had every right to make changes to its application.
Mr. Lieberman said Tuesday that he felt the judge made the right decision.
"We have seen seven changes so far since the appeal’s been filed," he said. "I’ve never seen anything like this before, and the board had just kept allowing them to change it. It just doesn’t seem to be that much concern about what the rules are, and what the remand order is."
He said with the new court order, he feels there is no way the Planning Board can approve the application because the changes JAC made to its application since April 26, 2006 show that its plans for the warehouse "weren’t legally sufficient."
Attorney Michelle Tullio did not return phone calls by press time.
Planning Board Chairman Dick Stern said Tuesday he didn’t want to comment on what implications the judge’s order may have on the board. He said the Planning Board planned to discuss it in executive session Tuesday’s after Messenger-Press deadline.

