to be allowed at 35-home
Tennent Road subdivision
Tennent Estates gains OK
in 7-0 zoning board vote
Additional lot coverage
to be allowed at 35-home
Tennent Road subdivision
By larry ramer
Staff Writer
MARLBORO — The Zoning Board has voted 7-0 with one abstention to approve the 35-home Tennent Estates development.
Developer Dan Werbler received approval at the board’s July 23 meeting. The development will be constructed on 20 acres on Tennent Road across from Brown Road in the Morganville section of the community.
Chairwoman Sherry Hoffer and board members Eric Menaker, Gerald Newman, Steven Sukel, Steven Wexler, Deborah Hoffman and Seth Goldzweig voted in favor of the application. Board member T. Grover Burrows abstained.
In January, the board approved a use variance for Werbler that will permit him to build a subdivision in accordance with R-10AH (residential affordable housing) standards on a commercial piece of property.
No homes in the development, however, will be set aside for sale to people whose incomes meet regional guidelines established by the state Council On Affordable Housing (COAH). All of the homes will be sold at market value.
During the board’s meeting on July 23, only two major issues remained to be resolved — the amount of the affordable housing payment (in lieu of building affordable housing) that Werbler would have to make to Marlboro and how much land homeowners in the future development would be able to use for accessories such as decks, patios and swimming pools.
The board members and the applicant arrived at an agreement on one aspect of the affordable housing payment, but decided that another issue involving that payment would be discussed by the township attorney and the applicant.
A township ordinance states builders must make a 0.5 percent contribution for each house that conforms to the town’s original zoning plan, township planning consultant Richard Cramer said. For each house that requires a variance from township zoning requirements, builders are assessed at a 6 percent rate. No regulation exists for land zoned for commercial use for which a variance to build residential units has been granted, Cramer said.
That is the case with Tennent Estates.
Cramer, zoning board attorney James Kinneally III, and attorney Bill Mehr, representing the applicant, arrived at an agreement whereby Werbler would make a 6 percent affordable housing payment for 29 houses, and a 0.5 percent contribution for the remaining six houses.
The percentage is tied to the value of the homes.
In reaching the agreement, the sides considered that six commercial lots would have been subject to development if the zoning board had not granted Werbler a variance, Cramer said. Furthermore, the higher percentage for residences built as the result of a variance being granted was instituted in order to allow the town to charge a higher fee for land that had become more valuable to developers, Cramer said.
Since the town would have realized revenue from six commercial lots if the variance in this case had not been granted, the sides believed that six of Werbler’s housing units should be charged at the 0.5 percent rate.be a complex, somewhat contentious issue.
Mehr, citing state regulation and a municipal ordinance, said the formula the town has used to determine affordable housing fees may be incorrect. Marlboro, he said, should apply the county equalization factor when determining developers’ affordable housing payments.
The county, he said, assigns each town an equalization factor in order to ensure that owners of new houses do not pay taxes at a higher rate than owners of older houses that have not been reassessed. Marlboro’s equalization factor as assigned by Monmouth County is 0.637, Mehr said.
If Marlboro correctly applies this ratio in determining Werbler’s payment, according to Mehr, the developer will owe between $450,000 and $500,000, instead of the $696,000 to $738,000 that Werbler would owe using the town’s current formula.
According to Cramer, however, the town’s current formula is correct.
"The way the township is assessing the fee is consistent with [state] regulations and the regulations in our ordinance," Cramer said.
In the end, the zoning board chose to allow the township attorney and the applicant to iron out this matter.
"The applicant has agreed to abide by the township COAH standards after talking to the township attorney and all that," Hoffer said when reading the resolution approving Tennent Estates.
Mehr confirmed that he would talk over the matter with the township attorney and arrive at a solution.
Payments made by developers in lieu of building affordable housing are used by developing towns to transfer a portion of their affordable housing obligation to other communities or to rehabilitate substandard housing in their community.
There was some discussion about whether the affordable housing payment was a factor in the board’s approval of the original variance.
"One of the reasons this variance was granted in the first place was the affordable housing contribution … and now we’re apparently reducing what the contribution should be," said Burrows, who voted against the original variance.
"Affordable housing was never part of our decision-making on this application," said Hoffer, who conceded that board members did discuss the matter, but pointed out that it is not addressed in the text of the variance itself.
At the meeting on July 23, resident Peter Bellone, who has consistently opposed the Tennent Estates development, said, "I do remember a meeting where a contribution to COAH was cited as one of the two distinct benefits to the township of this development."
The other major piece of business that had to be handled was approving a variance that would allow future Tennent Estates homeowners to build accessories on their houses. Under the plans that were previously considered by the board, 30 to 32 percent of each lot could be developed. This would probably not have provided enough room for residents to add decks, pools, or patios onto their homes.
Lorali Totten, a civil engineer who is representing Werbler, proposed that the board allow an additional 6 percent of lot coverage in the development. She said this would allow the owners of the smallest houses to install a small deck or pool without having to seek zoning board approval.
Zoning board engineer Ernest Peters found that in a different residential zone, the RSCS zone, a township ordinance allowed houses, driveways and sidewalks to cover 32 percent of 10,000-square-foot lots. The ordinance allotted an additional 6 percent for accessories.
Peters said the ordinance set a precedent that could be used for the Tennent Estates development, where the smallest lots are approximately 10,000 square feet (quarter-acre lots). Following the discussion by Totten and Peters, the board agreed to adopt the 32 percent plus 6 percent formula.
Bellone was the only member of the public who spoke against the plan.
"This development will degrade the quality of life here," he said.
The consensus of the board members who voted for the development was that the applicant had worked hard to address the board’s concerns and deserved an affirmative vote.
Before abstaining, Burrows said, "I was the sole dissenting vote on the original variance, but I will admit that the applicant worked as hard as possible and agreed to many of our suggestions."
The matter of how the town should assess the value of each house turned out to