Cranbury candidates talk COAH

[Cranbury Press]

Cranbury candidates talk COAH

Thursday, October 16, 2008 5:05 PM EDT
By Maria Prato-Gaines, Staff Writer


CRANBURY — Both candidates for Township Committee say they will devote themselves to dealing with affordable housing obligations.

COAH released new round-three requirements in December, after its original round-three rules had been invalidated by the state Supreme Court a year earlier. The new rules were part of an effort to increase the number of new affordable housing units from 52,000 to 115,000 that would be required to be built in the state within the next 10 years. The rules were met with opposition from local officials from suburban towns around the state that argued that the amount of units created would increase the population so much that quality of life would decline and the schools and other infrastructure would be overburdened.

Cranbury’s obligations stand at 269, up from the 160 the township originally anticipated under the original round-three rules.

Cranbury is particularly concerned with the warehouse-to-job ratio used to determine affordable housing requirements. The formula stipulates that for every 1,000 square feet of warehouse space there should be one employee and one affordable housing unit for every 16 jobs. Some township officials disagreed with the figure, prompting a local survey of Cranbury’s warehouses, which has yet to be completed.

In addition, legislators recently passed a bill eliminating regional contribution agreements, which had allowed towns to pay urban communities to take on up to half of their obligations. The bill also increased a developers’ fee from 2 percent to 2.5 percent of the equalized assessed value of a building, a sum many critics say is not enough to pay for the new units generated by new development.
In past months, the township has entered into two lawsuits against COAH, one with the state League of Municipalities that focuses the broader issues of the new third-round rules and another, with Clinton Township and hand full of other municipalities, that focuses on more specific grievances, in this case the inaccuracy of the warehouse-to-jobs formula.

Republican nominee Win Cody said that instead of trying to tackle each problem separately he would like to see the town lobby for an entire review of the new third-round rules.

“I want to lobby for a total amendment to the affordable housing rules,” he said. “We need good, fair, productive affordable housing rules.”
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http://www.packetonline.com/articles/2008/10/16/cranbury_press/news/doc48f7ac6e5aca3649479480.txt

[Guest]

Can one of Mr. Ritter's supporters clarify for me what it meant when he says 130D needs to be scaled back now that we have to plan for more housing? It seems contradictory and I wonder if the Press misquoted. If we need to plan more housing then why would we scale back a site plan? I'm all for reducing the 130D site, but not because we need more housing.

This is not an attack, I just don't understand the comment. Since Mr. Ritter reads the site, but hasn't posted perhaps he will this one time to clarify. If not, perhaps one of his supporters?

[Guest]

The COAH plan being prepared specifies a range of units (29 to 40-something).

A preliminary site plan for the site calls for 36 units (down from an original site plan draft with 44 units).

Mr. Ritter's comments may be in the context of reducing the number of units in the current draft site plan to something more in line with the lower end of the range specified in the COAH element being prepared for submission to the state.

[Jersey Dad]

Please note, the original plan called for 30 units at the 130 D Site (which was a stretch). Without public discussion, that number was pushed up to 44 in March 2008 and then "reduced" to 36 in October.

[Jersey Dad]

To answer the question about Mr. Ritter's comments, the 2005 plan called for 29-30 units because that is what was needed to complete the plan without buying more land. Now that our obligation has grown and we are forced to redo the plan, we can start from the perspective of "what is the fair and consistent thing to do?"

If you start from the perspective of what is fair and consistent, you get an answer of 18-29 units with some mixture of ownership and rental units and provisions for some amount of open space for recreation.

[Jersey Dad]

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I do want to clarify that while I have spoken with Mr Ritter about this subject, I don't speak for Mr. Ritter.