Mistake
Well the Planning Board attorney made it perfectly clear to resident Mark Fisher. It’s okay if a mistake is made…..as long as it’s the government who is making the mistakes.
Mr. Fisher is just an ordinary citizen; no political yearnings, no advocate for publicity, just a very smart guy who reads everything, researches it even more, asks a lot of questions, and in the end, makes one heck of a lot of sense. His latest finding involves that second big apartment complex going up on First Avenue, specifically at 160 First, directly next to the first one at 158 First.
Of course, the builder…the same one who sought and got lots of variances for the first building, needs a lot of variances to build the second building the way he wants. At one point it was 44 deviations from the law, but he’s cutting back on that.
So the public heard from a couple of experts at the first meeting way back in July. That meeting was continued, they didn’t know until exactly when, then they set the date for September 19, that’s Tuesday night at 7 at Borough Hall.
But Mark likes to be thorough about everything and whether it’s because others have told him some things or whether he just wanted to take a second look, he OPRA’d the list of property owners who were notified of the July meeting. By law every property owner within 200 feet of a property wanting a variance must be notified of the public hearing. Mark’s investigation showed that that did not happen. A mistake says the Borough.
This local resident, who doesn’t get paid a dime for all his research, questioning and setting things right, found not one, not two, but THREE property owners who were not notified of that first hearing in July. That would seem to make that meeting illegal under the laws as everybody can read.
Not only that, he pointed out to the attorney, since the notice for this Tuesday’s meeting says it’s a continuation of the first meeting, that’s wrong as well. As Mark pointed out, there could not have been a first meeting to continue, since if THREE property owners were not notified, then the law was not followed, so Tuesday’s meeting cannot be a continued meeting. A mistake says the Borough.
Well, said the attorney, in a two page memorandum to the Planning Board, that isn’t the case. You see, he pointed out, if it’s the Borough who made the mistake by not giving the applicant the full list of owners, that’s OK. You see, the attorney continued, there’s more to the law, which, of course, was written by lawyers. The Legislature included in the law
“The applicant shall be entitled to rely upon the information contained in such list, and failure to give notice to any owner, to any public utility, cable television company, or local utility or to any military facility commander not on the list shall not invalidate any hearing or proceeding. ” A mistake says the Borough.
So there you have it. It’s OK for the borough to make mistakes, but not the citizen, in this case, the firm that wants dozens of pardons from the law to build what he wants that is contrary to the law.
Mr. Fisher is clear. He trusts the borough employees. He certainly does not feel they did anything INTENTIONALLY wrong. He knows they work hard and are accommodating.
But he does ask….supposing that wouldn’t be the case? Supposing we had a different set of employees in Atlantic Highlands, and supposing there was one who for reasons of his own did not want a particular property owner to know what was planned to be a heck of a big change in his neighborhood. Is that still OK?
YEP. Because the law says so. The law says the applicant is entitled to rely on whatever the borough tells him. A mistake says the Borough.
The bottom line is…if you work for the government, it’s automatic….when it comes to the planning board notifications at least, you simply can’t make a mistake and if you do, itdoesn’t matter. You’re not to blame and we can all act like it did not happen.
The planning Board attorney is a smart lawyer, a likeable guy, a man interested in his work, proud of his reputation and does the best he can. And it’s for all of those reasons, he seems, he took Mr. Fisher’s letter apart and answered it paragraph by paragraph.
He admitted Mr. Fisher was correct in all his findings about folks not being notified, folks outside the 200 foot limited being notified, etc… but …A mistake says the Borough.
He even agreed with a lot Mr. Fisher wrote and said he was correct. He agreed there were indeed property owners that should have been notified under the law and were not. He searched, he said, but could not find the owners of two of those lots. In the case of the third, the attorney said it was owned by the same person who owned another lot and was so notified because of the other lot.
Even conceding that Mr. Fisher is correct in his facts, the attorney cites the laws once again that makes it clear that first hearing, whether or not everybody was notified, was valid. A mistake says the Borough.
This brings up a couple of other questions though. Has the property owner who just wants to move his garage a little closer to the line ever had to cancel or re-advertise his planning board hearing because he got an incomplete list from the borough records?
And now that the attorney knows and admits some owners were not notified for the hearing on this apartment business complex, can the next meeting still go forward before the borough tells the applicant who they are?
