By Vic Monaco, Managing Editor
HIGHTSTOWN The developments proposed for the only two significant open tracts of land in the borough are being challenged by the regional school district and East Windsor.
A plan for 246 residential units at the former Minute Maid plant site would have a “very disruptive effect” on the school district, East Windsor Regional officials said this week.
And both they and township officials said they are similarly concerned with a proposal for 130 units at the former rug mill tract, particularly a long-discussed program there that would allow the borough to keep payments in lieu of taxes to itself.
The school district officials brought their message Monday night to the borough Planning Board, which was holding its second meeting to discuss rezoning the 16 acres of the 37-acre Minute Maid site that lie in Hightstown, along with 4 surrounding acres along Mercer Street.
School board attorney David Coates said if the Minute Maid tract were “intensively developed for residential uses, that would generate large numbers of pupils, which translates to increased services. Increased services means increased expenses that impact property taxes.”
”This would be a very big change with a very disruptive effect,” he said, later adding that the plan is “huge and unanticipated.”
School board Vice President Bob Laverty said, “We just finished an expansion project … and we’re looking at capacity limits as is.”
More specifically, schools Superintendent Ron Bolandi told the planners that Grace Rogers Elementary is the only school in the district with unused classrooms. Even the new Ethel McKnight Elementary school, which opened just a year ago, has no more classroom space, he said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bolandi qualified his comment, saying there also is space for classrooms at the Walter C. Black Elementary School but that space would have to be taken from other uses, including special education. As for having no room at the new McKnight school, Mr. Bolandi said he believes the district did the wrong kind of enrollment/demographic study before he was hired and underestimated the amount of residential construction near that school.
Mr. Bolandi told the Planning Board that parents with several children never wind up paying their fair share of the district’s cost to educate those children.
”Development is great; everybody wants to have development on their tax rolls. But I think you’re going to be in a Catch 22 if you develop something that brings in a lot of children which increases the (school) budget drastically,” he said.
The district officials offered their services as a resource in, among other things, figuring out the potential enrollment increase as a result of the planned development.
Paul Josephson the attorney who in July helped present a conceptual plan for 246 condominiums and townhouses along with some retail space at the Minute Maid site said his group has not yet looked at the potential impact on the regional school system, but it will do so.
”We’re committed to working with them (school district officials) and coming up with a consensus of what the impact would be,” he said Wednesday after attending Monday’s meeting.
”Their concern is a legitimate one but, like many things, it’s premature until we have a better sense of what the project will look like. At the same time, knowing that the project will be condos and townhouses, we know they don’t generate as many families as a single-family development does.”
Mr. Josephson said his group will be commissioning both a market feasibility study that would determine the appropriate breakdown of the bedroom sizes of the units and an economic study that would include the impact on local tax rolls.
Planning Board Chairman Steve Misiura told the district officials, which also included board member Susan Lloyd, that the board is in the “very early stages” of discussing rezoning the land. He previously said the process could take four or five months.
He also said Monday that the board welcomes future input from district officials.
The Minute Maid parcel bordered by Mercer Street to the south, Summit Street to the east and East Windsor to the west is zoned industrial in the borough and industrial/office in East Windsor. That means that zoning changes or variances would be needed for any residential use.
The Minute Maid plant closed in November 2003. The land there is one of only two developable parcels in the borough, the other being the site of the former rug mill on Bank Street.
Mr. Laverty told the planners that district officials are also concerned with the impact of the proposed development plan at the second site.
Mr. Bolandi and Ms. Lloyd said after the meeting that they find it very hard to believe that that 130-unit proposal would only generate about 26 school-age children. That figure has been suggested by a consultant for the developer of that land, according to Borough Council President Walter Sikorski.
And Mr. Coates labeled as “poor public policy” the proposed payment-in-lieu-of taxes program at the mill site.
The PILOT program would allow the borough to garner $750,000 once all the units are occupied in lieu of taxes, included those normally earmarked for the school district. Some Borough Council members have said the borough would give some of that money to the district, but Mr. Coates said the schools could easily become an “unintended victim” of the PILOT program.
Despite the program being discussed publicly for about four years, East Windsor Township Attorney David Orron wrote a letter Wednesday to Hightstown Mayor Bob Patten and the Borough Council saying the Township Council wants to know if they intend “to provide tax breaks, tax exemptions or reduced tax assessments” for the mill developer.
”This is a matter of serious interest to East Windsor Township, since the granting of any tax breaks to the developer, whereby he is not paying full school taxes, could result in a direct impact by way of increased school taxes for East Windsor resident,” he wrote.
Mayor Patten could not be reached for comment. But Mr. Sikorski said Wednesday that he was surprised at the timing of the township question.
”It’s been an essential component of the plan since its inception. All of a sudden it seems that everyone is concerned,” he said.
”The bride has just walked down the aisle for the ceremony and now the lawyers are marching in with the prenuptial agreements.”
”I know it’s a benefit to the town but communities all over the state do them,” he added. “Does it have an impact on the school district? Yes. But the Borough Council has a provision that it could take some PILOT money and make a donation to the school district to compensate it for the projected 26 to 30 children who would need school services, which I believe is miniscule.”
Asked about the timing of the letter, Mayor Mironov said the Township Council discussed it Tuesday night in conjunction with an Aug. 30 school district letter expressing its concerns to the borough. She added that the mill project planning has been “going on for so long, it’s hard to know when to enter into the discussion.”
Ms. Mironov added that she checked with the borough a couple years ago and was assured that no final decision had been made in regard to the PILOT program.
Regarding the Township Council’s concern, she said, “As part of a joint school district every penny of school taxes that are not paid burden East Windsor residents and the school district. This is not a one-town school district.”
The proposal for the mill site is the subject of a pending developer’s agreement.
There are no plans for a PILOT program at the Minute Maid site, Borough Planner Tamara Lee said at Monday’s meeting.
