New U.F. planner wants to change the changes
Master plan to undergo another round of review
BY JANE MEGGITT Staff Writer

UPPER FREEHOLD - New township Planner Charles Newcomb doesn't see the need for the land use element of themaster plan to be totally redone.

Newcomb gave his evaluation of the land use element at the April 22 Planning Board meeting. The board adopted the element in December 2007 after nearly three years of considering changes tomaster plan.

Newcomb called the plan structurally sound. He said it was done in a comprehensivemanner and follows the letter of the law.

"A lot of things in it are somewhat positive," he said.

The new planner said that any of his recommendations for the plan would require further discussion, elaboration and analysis on the part of the board. The board could choose to implement his recommendations through an amendment to the plan it adopted in December, he said.

Newcomb proposed a new strategy for noncontiguous clustering. He said that the state provides enabling legislation for using noncontiguous parcels and zoning for Planned Unit Development (PUD).

With PUD, a municipality can transfer the type, density and intensity of land use from one property to another. For example, he said, in Florence Township in Burlington County, a developer transferred the density of one property to another for noncontiguous residential cluster development of senior housing in an agricultural district.

"The property owner owned both the sending and receiving areas,"Newcomb said.

Newcomb also gave an example of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) and said that Chesterfield Township in Burlington County identified a receiving zone to create a village center.

"A lot of Department of Community Affairs money was given to Chesterfield to do what was needed to lay out a circulatory system in the village," he said.

Mayor SteveAlexander commented that Chesterfield "drank the Smart Growth Kool-Aid" and noted its town center is large.

Boardmember Richard Bullock said the project can also be looked at as having preserved a great deal of Chesterfield.

Newcomb said that Upper Freehold's proposed clustering provision does not designate sending/receiving areas for densities being transferred, which could present a problem. He cited two court cases, Builders League of South Jersey, Inc. vs. Township of Franklin and Flynn Tucker LLC et al vs. Township of Springfield.

In the Franklin Township case, the plaintiffs claimed that the township established a TDRprogramin amanner not authorized by municipal land use law. A lower court judge found for the plaintiff in 2005 and an appellate court upheld the decision in 2007.

In the Springfield case, three ordinances were adopted in 2006 that allowed landowners to do density transfers from sending zones to receiving zones under 3-acre zoning. However, property owners who opted not to participate in the density transferwere subject to 10-acre zoning. The court ruled that Springfield created a "hybrid" form of TDR and invalidated the ordinances.

Newcomb said Upper Freehold's noncontiguous clustering provision could also be invalidated using similar criteria.

Board member J. David Holmes asked how a court could find fault with the township's "floating hamlet" provision if it adheres to the letter of the law. Newcomb said the provision has not been litigated and compared the township trying to implement it to playing Russian roulette.

Newcomb said receiving areas need infrastructure and county road access. However, he said that identifying such areas in town as receiving areas could cause a court to claimthat the township is using TDR.He said TDR would be very expensive for the township and could take a great deal of time. Newcomb also addressed the land use plan element's attempt to change the township's base zoning from 3 to 6 acres in the Agricultural Residential (AR) zone and from 5 to 10 acres in the Residential/Agricultural 5 zone. Newcomb said there is an alternative to changing the current densitywith an option to protect natural resources. He said a "net density" unlike a "gross density" would exclude or reduce buildable tracts by taking into consideration floodplains, wetlands, streams and streamcorridors and the like. Boardmember Richard Stern said wetlands, slopes and similar attributes enhance properties.

Newcomb also recommended open lands subdividing, clustering and lot averaging instead of noncontiguous clustering. He described open lands zoning as a concept that requires most of a tract to remain open and available for farming or natural resource protection and defines minimum standards for soil quality and usable land for open lands. Between 70-75 percent of a tract would be preserved as farmland or for natural resource protection. The remaining land is then planned to accommodate the permitted residential development, according to Newcomb.

The planner also said that the land use plan element does not address the wastewater disposal issue. He said the board should consider a provision for onsite and decentralized or clusterwastewater systems for developments of a certain size and that the township should address themanagement of those systems. He said a decentralized or cluster system is a collection and treatment system under the common ownership and management of two ormore homes or buildings, but not an entire community.

Newcomb also said that the land use element does not spell out the purpose of the Parks,Education andConservation zone.He said the zone seems to mix public and private land and the township should indicate if it wants to restrict development on any parcels in that zone.

Of the nonresidential aspects of the land use element, Newcomb said he does not understand why the board expanded the General Industrial zone. He also said that the Research,Office andManufacturing (ROM) zone has three preserved farms, a number of residential properties and wetlands abutting it, which limit its ability to be developed. He recommended removing the zone and having it revert back to AR.

Stern said that a ROM zone does no good without the infrastructure to make it work.

Newcomb also said that the land use plan must coordinate with the township's Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) plan. The township currently has a task force working on the COAH plan, with former township Planner Richard Coppola formulating the municipality's COAH plan.

The board's Vice Chairman Doug Raynor,who ran themeeting in the absence of Chairman John Mele, said that the land use plan will be very good after having two planners work on it.