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Mayors play waiting game
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - March 19, 2008)
It could be said that the mayors of the
Pascack
Valley have gotten used to waiting. Regional efforts spearheaded by the Pascack Valley Mayors Association (PVMA) to block the Federal Aviation Administration’s airspace redesign have come to a standstill and the reopening of an emergency room on the bankrupt
Pascack
Valley
Hospital site could take several months after the site’s recent sale.
At the end of this week, with comments on revised affordable housing regulations due to the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), begins yet another waiting game that could take as few as three months or, as some have predicted, several years. In this case, however, the mayors are counting on a long wait to deliver the outcome they desire.
COAH previously put out a set of what is known as Round 3 regulations, and every
Pascack
Valley municipality other than Emerson and Montvale formulated a housing plan, or passed a resolution telling COAH that they were working on a housing plan, based on them.
However, the original Round 3 regulations were rejected in a court challenge and, in December 2007, COAH announced its revised Round 3 regulations. If they are approved in June as scheduled, the new rules would significantly increase the obligation of affordable housing units relative to market rate units.
In a first step in fighting the changes, the PVMA unanimously agreed to engage Burgis Associates in Westwood, the planner for several
Pascack
Valley municipalities, and attorney T. Thomas Van Dam, who has worked as planning and zoning board attorney in towns such as River Vale and Montvale, to prepare a comment letter before COAH’s March 22 deadline.
After meeting with the PVMA in February, Donna Holmqvist of Burgis Associates returned to the most recent mayors meeting last Wednesday, March 12 to walk the mayors through a 20-page document that will be submitted to COAH on their behalf.
“[COAH has] a different agenda than the mayors of the
Pascack
Valley support,” said Woodcliff Lake Mayor Joseph LaPaglia, president of the PVMA. “There’s a whole host of issues.”
Among the changes to third round regulations that the PVMA objects to is an increase in the growth share obligation. The new ratios are one affordable unit among five units and one affordable unit for every 16 jobs. Previously, ratios were one affordable unit among nine units and one for every 25 jobs.
Other changes include a modified review process that would expedite the review of applications including affordable housing; an increase in the state’s affordable housing need from 52,000 units to 115,000 units; and an increase in the cost of Regional Contribution Agreements (RCAs), which allow municipalities to create affordable housing beyond their borders.
Additionally, new regulations would decrease the credit received for age-restricted affordable housing units; current rules count them as 50 percent of a unit, but they would only count as 25 percent under the new regulations.
A new aspect of the regulations is that municipalities must provide the opportunity for the construction of affordable housing through zoning regulations based on projected residential and employment growth, which are provided by COAH.
LaPaglia said that the mayors had until Monday, March 17 to submit individual comments to Holmqvist on her analysis, but noted that “they all seemed supportive. Donna [Holmqvist] has done a very comprehensive analysis for the mayors. We intend to submit it by the deadline.”
The submission is not a formal objection to the proposed regulations, and municipalities such as Hillsdale and Montvale have opted to submit comments to COAH as independent municipalities in addition to teaming up with the PVMA.
If the regulations are adopted in June as scheduled,
Bergen
County municipalities will have to submit housing plans by Sept. 30. While LaPaglia said that the PVMA has no plans to take legal action, talk of lawsuits across the state could put off the adoption of the proposed regulations, a delay that local officials hope will sway regulations back in their favor.
For more information, visit www.nj.gov/dca/coah. Written comments can be submitted to COAHmail@dca.state.nj.us through March 22.
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com.
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