Cranbury Forum | Bulletin | Info Sharing

Post a reply

Username

Subject

Message body

Emoticons

Font colour: Font size:

Close Tags

[quote="anon-s316"]Paul Mullen:

Glenn’s response has a few valid points. I was a member of the committee that updated the list of permitted uses within the HC Zone. As a member of the DRC I attended two meetings where the Penske application was discussed. As a member of the Environmental Commission I met directly with Penske to discuss the EC’s concerns about their application. And despite all of this knowledge of Penske, I fumbled the ball. Here’s what I did wrong.
.
First, back in 2016 I had no objection to the term “substantially similar”. Now that I understand the damage it can wreak, Cranbury should do everything in its power to remove this phrase from our Code. Second, I failed to recognize during the DRC meeting on January 24, 2019 that a “permitted use” decision regarding Penske had ALREADY been made at. In fact, it wouldn’t be until March 11 that I would realize that the Zoning Officer made this decision back on June 12, 2018. Because of this, it wasn’t until March 21 (following the EC meeting on March 18) that the EC was prepared to distribute our objections to the Penske application to the TC, PB and ZBA. 
.
Now, on to Glenn’s misstatements: First, Glenn insinuates that I should have raised an objection about “permitted use” at the two DRC meetings involving Penske. Actually, no one at these meetings mentioned that issue because there is NEVER a discussion at a DRC meeting as to whether a use is permitted or not. That’s something determined solely by the Zoning Officer in conjunction with the Zoning Board. Second, Glenn indicates that the EC was negligent when it decided to “wait until nearly 14 months after Penske came to Paul Mullen’s attention before it raised an objection”. The January 18, 2018 DRC meeting with Penske was a short, Informal discussion. Many meetings such as these never make it to the full application stage. It’s ludicrous for Glenn to suggest that the EC should have raised an alarm to the Township after such a meeting. 
.
Finally, Glenn makes a demonstrably false claim, stating that “Paul raised no objections, environmental or otherwise” at the Penske DRC meetings. DRC minutes available online at the Township website state otherwise. At the 2018 DRC meeting, I was deeply concerned about Penske’s awareness of Cranbury’s new Riparian Zone Ordinance. At the 2019 DRC meeting I had so many concerns that it was agreed that Penske should attend the next EC meeting in person to discuss them in detail. 
.
Glenn’s response concludes by painting a benign picture of a typical Penske Truck Leasing site. I can only guess that he’s unaware of the 2017 article I posted earlier in this thread which contains 3 Penske sites in a list of “N.J.’s Most Toxic Sites”. 
.
In retrospect, though, almost of everything written above is beside the point. All of this is water under the bridge. I just couldn’t let some of Glenn’s statements go unchallenged. So let me end with the following.
. 
We’re having this discussion because, in June of 2018, the Zoning Officer made a mistake. He misread the list of permitted uses in the HC Zone and thought that it said “Automobile Rental & Leasing”. But it does NOT say this at all. It says “Passenger Car Rental & Leasing”, a markedly different thing. But based on this error and the fact that (in Cranbury’s Code) the term Automobile also includes trucks, the Zoning Officer concluded that the rental of ALL TRUCKS was also permitted, even 53-foot tractor trailers. This – and this alone – is why the Zoning Officer’s ruling should be appealed. You don’t need a law degree to see this. 
.
Because of ratables, the Township government would prefer to have a potentially toxic, 24,000 square foot, 24/7 truck rental facility on the banks of Brainerd Lake rather than a housing complex or a house of worship. If this is in line with Cranbury’s Master Plan, something is fundamentally wrong.[/quote]

Options
HTML is ON
BBCode is ON
Smilies are ON

	Disable HTML in this post
	Disable BBCode in this post
	Disable Smilies in this post