Want deadline for submitting 10-year affordable housing plan moved to April 2009
By Aleen Crispino, Special Writer
Hopewell Borough Council and Mayor Paul Anzano have decided to join other municipalities and the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association in a letter seeking an extension of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) deadline for submitting a 10-year affordable housing plan.
They want it extended to April 7, 2009, when a water quality management plan is due to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
”The COAH process and water are intermingled,” said Borough Administrator/ Clerk Michele Hovan at the Nov. 7 council meeting, adding that the watershed association initiated the request that the two state deadlines be tied together.
Councilman Mark Samse noted that while wastewater treatment is one component of water quality management, “part of it is land use impact related to water quality.”
The borough will use the additional time to prepare its argument that COAH has overestimated the amount of vacant and developable land in the borough. Under new rules effective June 2, 2008, COAH used its own estimates of a municipality’s residential and job growth to recalculate the number of affordable units it must provide as its “fair share” obligation. Prior to that time, municipalities calculated their own projected growth.
The new COAH rules follow a commitment by New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine to provide an additional 100,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years, and increase the statewide 10-year goal from 52,000 to 115,000 additional units, according to the state Department of Community Affairs.
In December 2006, the borough submitted to COAH a third-round plan to provide 10 additional units of affordable housing, all as accessory apartment units, by 2014. The plan was based on a 2004 job survey by Planning Board member Jacki Perri and the borough’s own assessment of the amount of land suitable for development.
Borough Planner Carl Lindbloom, in an Oct. 27 memo to the Borough Council and Planning Board, described the new third-round fair share obligations which COAH has imposed based on its projections of housing and job growth in the borough over the next 10 years.
According to Mr. Lindbloom, COAH has projected an increase of 25 dwelling units in the borough by 2018 (from 841 in 2004 to 866 in 2018). This projected increase adds five additional units of affordable housing to the 10 units from the borough’s unmet second-round obligation. As for job growth, COAH has determined the borough had 648 jobs in 2004 and projects a total of 904 jobs by 2018, an increase of 256 jobs over the 14-year period. At the COAH requirement of one affordable unit for every 16 new jobs, this would mean an obligation of 16 additional units, for a total of 31 units of additional affordable housing required by 2018, said Mr. Lindbloom.
Under the new COAH rules, a municipality can seek an adjustment of its third-round growth projections based on insufficient vacant and developable land capacity. Mr. Lindbloom said preliminary results of his 2008 inventory of vacant land in the borough found 13 residential parcels, totaling approximately 6 acres, to be developable for single-family, residential use and that the borough had lost at least eight dwelling units since 2004.
Ms. Perri’s 2004 jobs survey, which is being updated, showed 421 jobs in the borough, 227 fewer than the state’s estimate. Other than a 3-acre parcel on Somerset Street now slated by the state DOT for a parking lot for the proposed, reactivated West Trenton Rail Line, there is “no vacant and developable land zoned for nonresidential use in the borough,” said Mr. Lindbloom. Of the two largest residential-zoned parcels in the borough, the 7.4-acre Johnson Tract is deed-restricted and a 12.98-acre parcel of Hoge Farm was recently proposed for farmland preservation.
The borough plans to request a vacant land adjustment to limit its third-round obligation to its prior unmet need of 10 units, said Mr. Lindbloom. It would then have various options for meeting this 10-unit obligation by 2018, including accessory apartment units, rehabilitation of existing housing, redevelopment of properties for residential use or the building or renovation of a group home for the developmentally disabled.
The borough has approximately $160,000 in Small Cities Grant funds remaining from previous years that could be used to rehabilitate properties for use as affordable housing, said Ms. Hovan.
IN OTHER BUSINESS, council adopted an ordinance to update land use ordinances regarding major and minor site plans, defining under what circumstances a minor site plan may be submitted and specifying application fees.
Also, council President David Knights reported that an Oct. 20 meeting with the state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) “went very well.” The borough Building Committee met with three representatives from the AOC to discuss how to reduce the cost of converting the former Masonic Hall at 88 E. Broad St. into a new municipal building and court.
A total of approximately $1.3 million has been allocated for the project. Six bids, submitted in August, all exceeded this amount, which is intended to cover the costs of renovation and moving into the new building. The lowest bid was $1,654,887. On Sept. 4, council rejected the bids. Mr. Knights has said he would like the borough to spend no more than $1.1 million on the renovation to have money left over for moving and other costs.
While the revised plan would add a small room for the prosecutor and public defender, it would eliminate three of the five bathrooms included in the April 2007 plan, including a separate bathroom for the Municipal Court judge, and allow the borough to keep the two-story addition with elevator to allow wheelchair users access to the building, said Mr. Knights. Modifications could be made to the exterior of the addition to save money, he added, estimating that all of the modifications discussed would reduce the project cost by $200,000 to $300,000 and stating that further cost reductions would be necessary.
The borough will ask its architect, Russell DiNardo of HACBM Architects, Engineers and Planners, of Lawrence, to draw up a simple plan based on the discussion with the AOC, which oversees the Municipal Court system, and submit it to the AOC for review.
Mayor Anzano, who serves on the Building Committee with Mr. Knights and Councilman David Mackie, said the committee would give council a more comprehensive report at the Dec. 1 council meeting.

