Philipsburg land use board meeting April 25th 2024 adequate notice of this public meeting has been provided in accordance with the open public meeting act by posting notice on the bulletin board in the minicipal building by publishing in The Express Times And The Star Ledger the official papers of the town of Philipsburg by posting notice on the website of the town of Philipsburg filing said notice with the town clerk of Philipsburg as well as furnishing said notice to those persons requesting it pursu to the open public meetings act as advertised action may be taken at this meeting and um board policy is the policy of the town of Philipsburg land use board will not hear any new cases after 10 p.m. and no noon Witnesses after 10:30 p.m. flag [Music] salute pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all Mr Von abent Mr Branch yeah Mr brodman is absent chairman Duffy here Mr null here councilwoman paus here Mr Penrose here mayor Piaza here Mr turnball here Mr zra here Vice chair Miss Wier here okay um do I have a motion on the minutes for dated 3 28 24 moved [Music] second okay are there any additions uh deletions or Corrections see none all in favor say I I I any against any extensions okay motion passes no resolutions no completeness or public no completeness public hearing um opposed uh area block 115 lot two qualifying for a non- condemnation Redevelopment all your thank you chairman um this is a van CLE was directed to undertake a study if the property known at 441 Heckman street block 1105 Lot 2 was uh met the statutory criteria for area in need of Redevelopment I would ask that my report uh dated April 3rd 2024 that was posted at the town website available at the board secretary's office also um made part of the record for the um meeting um in summary of the findings we did find that the subject property just P my notes did meet the criteria h of the state statutes uh to be considered in need of uh Redevelopment um State Statute AG has to do with uh smart smart growth and planning uh policy which is based on state policies and I could answer any questions related to this and it's related to njsa 412a Mr chairman secretary let's have this marked as exhibit one for the public record okay thank you does anyone have any questions this is public he yes um now we're going to open it to the public anybody has any comments on this uh report please step up to the microphone state your name and your address seeing none I'm closing public comment uh do I hear a motion on this report uh so that's a motion to approve yes yes sir or to is it approve or to uh forward both I would say approve and forward to the council motion to approve and forward and you agree with that Mr Zer yes I do okay okay any other questions uh roll call Mr Branch yes Mr zra yes Mr Penrose yes Mr turnball yes Mr n yes chairman woman paulus yes mayor pza yes Vice chairman Swiffer yes and chairman Duffy yes okay that passes correspondence there isn't any there's no bill this right no okay um update on land use fees the subcommittee we had some feedback and it most of the feedback thisth centered around uh keeping our fees adquate to or up to what Alpha's charges and Alpha age wise relates better to our uh Town than than the other ones their population and the population in the buildings are similar to The populations of ours their fees are uh haven't been done over so they're even older than ours and they're if you look at the like on the second page is where's just so far behind everybody that the recommendation would be to uh um submit our findings saying that we should come up to at least what Alpha does and whether Pat or whoever the the mayor uh wants to direct to increase the fees that would our recommendation would be I they haven't updated theirs in six or seven years and they're still like 10 times I I understand but shouldn't we attempt to go higher then to make sure that you know when we're not doing this again in two years when they well we're pretty it would be a sizable increase we're doing now uh so I mean you know to just just the site plan minor site plan we don't even have one um preliminary site plan is $500 their preliminary major site plan is$ 4,000 yeah you know I mean it's you know um the subdivisions we're at $100 they're at 400 um you know we don't we don't even have preliminary for major subdivisions we have nothing there's a 750 to 1500 so I I you know discussion was the feedback that I had was that it it it would be a an increase and it's not excessive compared to some of the others or even higher yeah I understand the idea of using Alpha because they have the similar characteristics that we have I think that's a good I'm just wondering whether we should go higher now as opposed to in two years revisiting this again I guess well I there was so we also had talk of doing our U our U what's the what's the book called oh yeah your not the master plan Z Z own ordinance of the book needs to be redone we've been trying to get it done the last four years it's it's over 30 years that hasn't been done so I mean if we do this is step it up and then if we if it takes us a year or two to do the the the book over and then they can address it more in depth then and it wouldn't be a huge increase again okay does anybody else have any comments on this just just looking at this we don't charge for a lot of similar Services right current cor we're not only way behind in value we just we're not charging for near as much as most of these are are charging right here our inspection zoning are it shouldn't cost us anything to run that department now it's it's it's a burden to the town you know just the the inspections alone and and any any kind of building variances we we don't even charge for variances you know yeah I see that you know so I mean you know people and there's a ton of Zing there's a ton of building going you know buying and redoing right now that we're just losing money we're bleeding money I'm definitely not what do you what do you do about a person say living on Louis Street with limited you know funds and they want to put a small little dish for their you know their mother or something to live there it cost them a fortune that's the only concern I have the time you get a you know a Varian for a side yard setback or whatever and you know the notification and all that other stuff yeah you know there's any kind of hardship John they can come in front of the board you know I mean we can we we've looked at a lot of different things that in the book over the years um I know as far as when it was the Zoning Board of adjustments as long as they wanted to come to the board and and question it like I don't have a problem with these fees with you know big commercial projects um you know stuff like that but homeowners I don't know have a hard time that's my opinion I I could I just want to comment real quick on what Keith said I don't think the board has any authority to wave fees because that would be you know pre preferencing one person or the other uh if there's going to be any opportunity to wave fees that would have to come from the Town Council to say that there is an option and maybe set some criteria that the board consider can consider but because the council sets all financial matters in the town the board cannot do that without Express Authority from but can we can we have it where you can separate new construction with existing buildings or maybe have a residential fee how about private versus um commercial something I agree with you on that because because if it's new construction is an addition new construction is it that's where I if it's an exist if it's an existing building let me throw something out for a thought I don't think you can discriminate and I don't I'm not using that in in bad context you can't say this is private this is commercial because you could have a small home that's privately owned by John Doe and you could have a small home that's owned by absentee landlord so you don't want to get into the private versus commercial distinction but where you I think you can clearly make the distinction is the size of the project because it it entails more work so yeah there there should be a a big difference in a major site plan versus a minor and maybe just a you some variances but you can't make you got to be careful on on what you're doing because you would have a commercial guy come in here and say you know I'm being discriminated against lawsuit so it has to be I think really based on the size of the project would be the key and and that would be determined by the total cost of the project is that how you would determine that recommend square foot of square foot then you would figure out if you wanted to buy square foot of the lot or number of lots in a sub if it's a subdivision um if it's a site plan or variance potentially it's the square foot of either the Improvement or the overall building per floor you might have um a minimum right Scott that should be except if it applies to everybody or a maximum capping case so your Bridge Point you don't necessarily want and you're charging a dollar per square foot you don't want 4 a half million would that be in a [Music] language well this this is all obviously this the council is going to make the decision all you can do is make recommendations I think all your points are well taken but I think Tim's is excellent to suggest by square footage is that that's totally rationally related you can defend that in court if you need to it's hard to defend commercial versus residential or Plaza I I don't want to complicate things but I just think it's in all fairness I mean charge somebody that who put the small little addition on her house would cost them thousands of dollars just to get the approvals that just do cost more an approval than it just doesn't make sense you're you're going to hurt a lot of people I think I just like to point out that the the Departments have to operate on these fees currently we are put putting out a huge tax increase so by not collecting at least adequate fees everybody does pay for uh those additions and things like that when we don't charge adequately those departments do run in red and they currently are so if I may I I agree with John and obviously there's going to be some sticker shock if you raise the price right but I also agree with chairman Duffy that if we're going to do it and we're going to shock the system one time at at a higher rate so that we don't have to revisit it and raise it again to keep up with Alpha I agree with that so I agree with you I agree with that consensus yeah I think we ran into that with the taxes in this in the town so you know short Falls and then having to make this so yeah I would I would look at that you know Mr stegler I would Kelly you wanted to say something um about the variances we do charge $100 for a variance but only it could be 11 variances and it's only $100 where I know some of the other municipalities that I had pulled their reports they charge per variance so if there's 11 it's $1,100 instead of only 100 but we do charge $100 $100 for the first 50 for anything as long as it's uniform right right whatever you come up with Keith when when were these values applied to this do you know when this was when was Alphas applied no our our our value our probably 30 years ago at least at least so in 30 years has never increased no right okay and I mean if if you didn't even like 2% a year Al's numbers for Alpha Tim just looked it up Alpha's numbers were done in 2013 on their code book in the key and green witch Little P out I don't know when I I I looked looked at Alpha and I knew it was about 10 years he he just looked it up it's 11 how would you like to move forward I'd like to make a that Rec recommendation I'd like to have the recommendation that uh we submit our findings to council and the mayor that we recommend that we uh bring our fees in line with alas can um Tim do you want to um what did you say square footage men and cap or minimum a minimum amount an application um potentially a cap um because you really don't know what size you're going to end up with so if it's not something the board has ability and they're going to have to come to council to sayd like to use and maybe a kind of a scale variance gu there's some that I have seen schedule variant schedule I have seen some that have for the first C variant versus the first D variants a minimum fee and then additional fee on top of that or if you just have any time any number of variances it's this this Fe and it's not the typically the variance isn't based off square footage of anything it's just if you have a variance or not do you think that would help with uh the square footage Min and Max with the I guess like you would say the small um you know residential verse well let let me ask you a question here so I have a small lot I need a shed only place I can put the shed is close to the property line as bares a shed cost me $22,000 for a brand new shed what is it going to cost me to get the approval to put that shed in at this at at the alpha rates you're talking thousands of dollars correct you would be a variance application um so it would almost well Alpha you be both variants of looks like that's let's it's either 350 or 750 depending on if I'm reading the right line but that likely would be a setback from the property line either one or two setbacks and now they just time ah head I don't call the charge per variance but you would be your application fee would be a variance application either 350 or 750 yeah the use variance is 750 the B variance is 350 but there a lot of them if you remember last time when Jack was here they were just arbitrarily denied and we had that subcommittee meeting to to let the inspect zoning officer at least go out there and say hey there is no there is no setback when your house is on the line there is no setback if you're yeah he he had the uh the um ability to to make that call without coming to the board right M but I'm all for raising the fees I'm just need to protect you know some smaller projects it just just doesn't make sense to pay you know a large fee for little little projects like Leo shed or it's anything over 8 by8 R requires yeah I don't know the exact but yeah if we're going to put a shed in your you especially if you're putting in the corner on the uh on the line on the line and sometimes that's your only choice you have well that's usually where you prefer we do it sooner than later I have sooner than later I have another question I and I because I don't know enough about ESC project okay is this covering because I get a lot of letters about esro I get a lot of emails about escrow I'm cced on that you know somebody has to put more money in so forth is this going to cover what they're suggesting is that going to give us enough that's just their this is their application fees that actually goes to the town the escrow goes in separate accounts so when Tim sends me in a bill or Scot or anything that has to do with that that is a separate account that's set up for escrow so that comes out of that this actually goes right to this is under our line as the board the second page where it says that's scrub yeah yeah that that's this comes through the board that goes no the es goes to goes on the side that's separ this goes on the side go on the side that's a for them but but I'm questioning whether that's are we asking for enough money sometimes we're not but that's an easy fix you can hold send them an email I understand that more money and that happens a lot the problem is with our escrow count it's not there's not a dollar amount set it's just by lot size and and whatnot so it's usually the bigger things that are happening like McDonald's and Popeyes and RVs and things like that they're usually the bigger ones that we need more escrow that they have to send into us that's because again that's because our our loot charges are like $50 or 250 you know so because the lots are small the amount is small whereas Alpha is hitting you with a th000 4,000 because if they're going to put a a development in they got to draw down from that then they get it back if they use they don't use it yeah that's not money that comes to us that's no I understand that I just want to make sure there's enough money being put in I have a suggestion I don't have any saying this but just a suggestion I think everybody's had a really good conversation here today and I think you should probably ask the subc community to go back and work on it and ask everybody to put their input in an email to whomever and then either you or Keith or somebody should be prepared to go to the council meeting when it's brought up because ultimately all this is is a recommendation but if you give it a lot of thought and you can explain to the council you'll really help the council save them from doing a lot of work if they think you put a lot of thought into it but I don't it doesn't appear as though you really want to make any recommendations at this point I think you all raised very good questions that require a little bit more thought and I'm happy to answer those questions and and I know Tim is but I would be hesitant to do something tonight I understand that um and Keith how do you feel about the idea of breaking it down into square footage we can do that I mean I'm just want I think what John is more or less talking about is is there is no square footage there I mean you're talking a 50ft lot and you're there's no setbacks there's no 25t setbacks so the The Sheds around the alley line or the the property line itself yeah but like if you want to put the addition on the small addition I mean you're adding whatever 100 200 square foot to or either that or a dollar amount yeah if you if you have a half double and you want to put a rear deck on the back of your house you need a Vance you're going to be on the property line you don't have the setbacks MH it's going to cost you quite a bit of money to get a varant just to put a deck on the back of your house so if we can find a way to protect that yeah but we're spending a lot of money just for the guy to go out there and inspect it and go in there and do it and he's not getting paid at all I mean we do have charge at all variant so so yeah if they're going out there at hundreds of dollars an hour point you you might be able to make some of that up on the site plan fees because I understand you know the variance whether it's the guy with the half double or it's quick check if the price is the same it seems unfair yeah exactly but where you can make that up is the guy with the deck uh isn't doing a site plan quick check is so your site plan fees could be higher as long as they're uniform and and rational this is off topic but on topic what's a permit fee cost to have a you want a permit you want to put a deck on what's the permit fee do you know what the Fe about $56 Z is like $56 right now it's at least two inspections as a footing and a framing and there's the frame yeah so there's twice that he has to go out and inspect for $56 we figured Tim's time was we what did we build $13 at one point for a cou worth of work that was a Road opening Department in it um for inspection UCC inspections Pat was looking into in adjusting those rates that's how far we're up in Manpower um but we talking building permit and Zing permit it's two totally different things yes and you can't even the building permit should just pay for the inspector to come out and make sure it's being built correctly really that has nothing to do with the zoning cost and the zoning inspections so there is a big difference there a zoning permit right now is $25 $25 that's pretty cheap I mean $2 that's it well why don't we uh why don't we Factor comfortable looking at a square footage model and see if people are more comfortable with that bring it backs well maybe the committee ought to meet and consider that maybe a variance and then a lesser fee for variances two through whatever okay so what were you saying about the site plan you're saying that that I was stuck there see see most most res residents aren't having a site plan right right it's usually a developer right right it's out on the high make a difference there is that what you look yeah I'm saying you can get away with you know quick check isn't going to be aall at $5,000 site plan applic uh you know so you don't want to have a $500 site plan application would that offset that though do I'm saying I think it would just help overall then you can try to keep these residential variances at a reasonable rate makes sense you know personally I you got quick check you at rby I mean you got you guys are only charging 350 or 500 bucks that's crazy man they can afford it and there's a lot of work that Tim's doing going out there there's no reason that shouldn't be in the couple thousands I I I get the person putting on a deck we've had quite a few you know there there's people in town who built five six spec houses and made a ton of money off of those with paid hardly anything yeah um and I and I agree with that I certainly see that yeah and you do have different classes of site applications you have right now on your book you have um site waiver exemption so if somebody's doing something that the board feels doesn't rise to the threshold or the inter definition really doesn't mean that should apply you have that you also have minor and then you have major or conventional or different different degrees of um and then your code book defines what each one of those are which ties back to your fee schedule who makes that determination um the classification is typically the board would make the classif would confirm the classification so um on a review letter if I'm doing it and they apply as if the applicant applies as a site waiver exemption I may or a minor I'll review your code definition and as long as it conforms to that definition as I read it I'll write my letter saying I believe it it conforms to a minor or if I see something that might not be I'll ask the board to provide an interpretation of if this is should be a minor or major yeah and that's pretty much in every one of his letters I see that so yeah it's for the board to decide yeah which is a little bit of a separate issue from your fee but it ties into concerns if a shed on the property line warrants a a major sub site plan the same as quick check because that is a varus or de and then certain configurations within the town how different style homes may not be permitted not permitted that's more your code updates or looking looking at your master plan land use your different elements of your master plan to um take into all these concerns so essentially it does go back to the site planning in a shed with a variance it that particular case it's everything's would go read the definition as is come before board the board would get the opportunity to make the decision on the classification and we've had people come in front of the board and say this isn't a a site Clan this isn't you know the one I can it was just last year where the property up in uh Delaware Heights it was a corner but because it was on a Bend he was putting was remember that house Tim sping porch yeah Jack wanted he enclosed he enclosed the porch he enclosed the porch and then he proposed a a fence in a pool and the fence height um potentially exceeded the height allowed in that yard changed the fencing yeah and we we knocked that that it wasn't a site can you make the call here yeah okay the board is a as a whole he did it ahead of time there was a language difference yes for forgiveness permission there was a language problem too but but the bottom line was he didn't you they weren't they and and when they asked Jack it was because of whatever it was the communication wasn't there when they came here we you know you shouldn't have done this you shouldn't have done this but is everything up to code and and the way the thing was we allowed it yeah and we pushed it because it was December and they hadn't it totally closed the porch yeah that's right and they had knocked the interior wall down yeah make some exceptions yeah so if I get this straight we could tie the uh the fees back to the type in our code you you have your spe structure already where you um or well if you compare more to Alpha yeah there's minor there's preliminary there's final um you will have a sight waiver exemption that does have a permit fee in your code book um so you have different applications that you accept you should want to make sure that you double check when you set your Fe schedule that each of the type of applications that you have in your code or reflected in your fee schedule um does alpha may not have everything that you have and you can charge for a preliminary and a final you know you have some small projects they see preliminary and Final on the same day and they Grant it they may have only paid one fee you could charge too and then when you have bigger like Warehouse projects or quick checks you know they're going to get preliminary but then maybe year or two years later they're going to come for final you know you can have a separate fee something consideration our preliminary and and final 175 and 150 office is 750 and 00 and we don't even have a charge for minor site plan so a guy put the shed in be let's say a minor site plan but not charging a we're just wanting them to pay the cost somebody's going to come out and do it at 200 bucks an hour and we we're not even charging nothing you know we we got to start paying the bill that's that the bottom line is we haven't paid our bills in the last four years we have to pay our bills and and we should make the people people that are doing the modifications pay their bills 510 yeah 510 your you have separate code for five for subdivision okay I guess we should uh go back and have it more in depth uh kind of presentation and I thought this would just come up I don't want to say simple but I thought those kind of questions would been left more towards uh the inspection department and to to see what Pat correlates what we're asking to to make those kind of transition more equal I just wanted to get it out there so that at least us as a board that's recommending this as a starting point and I'm sure inspect and uh Pat's going to go over because he's going to have his recommendation also right so I I mean all these questions are are really in depth I think it's more towards their per pvy than our pvy I mean we we're letting them know that we need this adjusted but I think we also I think we need to go back and you know look at the different applications that we allow make sure we're covering them um and you know maybe we you know do something with square footage or um because as John says we don't want to necessarily Stick it to a home and or just a put a Pao on but you know we don't want to give Quick Check $175 no bill either yeah it's not a lot of cups of coffee no well we do have to change these numbers I mean looking at them you know it's like wow we are way behind and yeah that means some bills are really getting neglected okay can we make a recommendation and where it like we want to have it more in line with Alpha without actually taking their numbers just just say more in line and that keeps the process going well you can do whatever you want you guys uh are going to make a recommendation to the the Town Council I would suggest you have specific numbers and if that means you want to talk to P you want to research additional towns you guys can do whatever you want that they're going to make the ultimate decision I just think you'll help them if you've said here we did our homework it'll make it easier for them I think you should give specific numbers minor site plan this major site plan this variance that this if you just say in line with Alpha that's because and I do not want to give the mayor and the council woman any ideas but be perfectly honest I'd kick it back to you and say you know I need specifics yeah that makes sense that's what I would do with Keith does your subcommittee maybe want to meet with that and kind of collaborate a little bit we we didn't we didn't really everything that was done was through emails and telephone conversations so uh we haven't had a sit down meeting of the board the subcommittee so we could just schedule some time okay maybe Tim is open to it maybe can stop in I will make I'll make myself available okay uh one Community I've worked with that does us has a square foot based fee schedule for some of their applications um some of the applications they have a set fee like a minor the smaller ones the bigger ones they have a square foot based uh that's per of Manville and that is that's under their code for uh section 30101 and that's available on their electronic code book that's Manville B of Manville Somerset County Section what is it again the section's going to be it's code 30 1101 1101 so Chapter 30 section 11:1 yeah chapter chapter 30 11:01 is really article 11 and then subsection 11 from there depending on how you search the code for but they do have a some other schedule does have a square foot item I would just suggest when you're looking at your P schedule also to consider checking with your um technical assistant on when the application comes in the ability to review and set understand the application to be able to complete make sure they're submitting the right fee once you go once you have a sliding fee based on square foot or different parameters it takes a little bit of exercise to get it filled out have to pay Tim to figure out what the fee istim yeah that's I want to make it too complicated a few times delay for that that's a bit of Balancing Act but you want to make sure then when you update your fees that your application that comes in is clear so the fee calculation is done already or to the best of the applicant ability the application hasn't hasn't been updated in 50 years I don't know when the last application was updated to you probably went to Fe were probably not probably before probably before that okay does anybody else have any other construction and we'll turn it back to you yeah come back do a redo okay no executive session um I'm going to open it for public comment at this time does anyone from the public have any comment please step up to the microphone state your name and your address seeing none I'm closing public comment wait wait okay have to get up there um AR grer 481 paral stet pburg what are you guys deciding now nothing are you going to work this out with the variances and fees and all yes we're okay you're still working we're still working on it and what are the options and there are many the kind of what we just discussed for the last the whole thing okay there's nothing narrow down yet yes okay that's all I wanted to know and well the other thing is when will you come out with the um the official well will have the will the committee will get together work through some things next month I'll ask for a report if they're ready the report will be ready if not will be specific numbers and fees and that's what I'm hoping yes and all we are doing though is recommending to council that this be increased and they can do what they would wish okay just want to make sure I got that right that nothing is basically decided yet no okay she had at least three months to do work months at least three months to do does anyone have anything for the good of the uh Board hearing none do I hear a motion for a German so moved second John all in favor say I any against I