PETERSBURG — Township Committee voted to move forward with consolidation of Upper Township’s planning and zoning boards into a joint land use board Aug. 27.
Solicitor John Amenhauser said Mayor Curtis Corson asked him to look into the legal issues that would involve.
The mayor is looking to cut costs of professionals and services by combining the boards.
“Under municipal land use law, if you chose to go in that direction, you would have to do so by ordinance but you could take that action,” Amenhauser said. “What would happen is that you would essentially be dissolving your zoning board. Your planning board would remain, its membership would remain — those that are on it now — and it would take over the functions of both the planning board that they currently exercise and the zoning board of adjustment.”
Amenhauser said the governing body would be able to appoint a few additional alternates but those serving now would continue until their term expired.
He cautioned committee that if they ever wanted to go back to two boards — “if this is something that sounds good now and it’s not so good a year from now” — the process would be more complicated.
“You’re not going to be able to do that just by routine action of the body. You are going to have to go to referendum at that point in time in order to then reconstitute your zoning board of adjustment,” he said. “A lot of consideration should be paid to that.”
The solicitor said if saving money is the main driver, they should also be talking about escrow fees.
“Escrow fees should be paying the brunt of your professional services for those bodies. The applicant should be fronting those costs through an escrow,” Amenhauser said. “We might want to look at what those numbers are and whether they need to be adjusted.”
Corson said the workload for the boards is not what it used to be and he believes it will remain on the light side.
He said there are several large projects coming up but suggested special meetings could be held if necessary.
“I would like to pursue it and move forward with it,” Corson said. “I believe we could bring members of the zoning board over to the planning board and it could be a cohesive, smooth transition.”
Amenhauser said there would be a learning curve for the planning board members.
“You’re going to go from a group of people that work to formulate a master plan and typically see site plans and subdivisions without much variance relief to being asked for potential use variance relief for residential dwellings and things of that nature,” he said.
Committeeman Tyler Casaccio, whose father Paul Casaccio is chairman of the Zoning Board, said he would like to make sure vacancies that come up on the joint board would be filled by those losing their positions on the zoning board.
“They need to have some zoning people on there to help shepherd them with learning,” he said.
“I’ve met with members of the zoning board already and I can actually see that as a very smooth transition,” Corson said.
– By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff