Villa Maria at the Planning Board Wednesday

Developer Robert McNerney and his attorney, Brian Chewkaskie, will be at the Planning Board meeting at Vermeule Community Center on Wed, June 25, at 7:30 p.m. to present their application to build 55 single family homes at Villa Maria.

Notice is attached: Villa Maria 6.25.08 Notice

If you want to see the application materials, they’re on file at the Zoning Office at 263 Somerset between 8:30 a.m. and 3 p.m., and if you get copies of anything that you want shared with blog readers, please get copies  to me for scanning and uploading. Contact me at communityrights at gmail.com for snail mail information if necessary. Copying fees are reimbursable – contact NPCCR Treasurer Gary Lewis at underyourroof at yahoo.com to submit receipts and get reimbursed.

At tonight’s Council meeting, Councilwoman Barbara Habeeb brought up the idea of requiring a Community Impact Study, to be paid out of the developer’s escrow funds, and to be done by an independent consultant chosen by the Borough officials. Such a study would collect and analyze data on the project’s impact on schools, taxes, fire, police, ems and public works services, ecology, traffic, flooding and many other issues.

Borough Attorney Eric Bernstein informed Barbara that such a study would fall under the Planning Board’s jurisdiction, not the Borough Council’s, but noted that several members of the Council are liaisons to or serve on the Planning Board, and said those people could relay the idea to the Planning Board chair, Tom Fagan.

I can’t be at the Planning Board hearing, so someone else who attends will have to take notes, and write up what happens if other non-attendees are to find out what transpires.

However, the Community Impact Study is something specific people can rally around and lobby for at the meeting. It’s a positive, data-gathering step within the Planning Board’s jurisdiction that would also not cost the Borough any money to conduct, and would give the Planning Board solid evidence on which to base their judgments and decisions about the project.

So it’s well worthwhile to go and pitch in your two cents to say “Community Impact Study sounds like a good idea! Do it!” in addition to whatever other comments you’d like to make.

Also, at the Council meeting tonight, Sheila Caprio – who coaches middle school girls’ sports in North Plainfield – spoke up and pointed out that the middle school and high school kids are mingling a lot, to the detriment of the younger kids, exposed too early to the influences and hostility of the older kids in the overcrowded classrooms and hallways.

She advocated that the Borough try to obtain Villa Maria to create a freestanding middle school, complete with athletic fields, to protect the younger kids and ease the overcrowding. It’s another idea to consider, and possibly a compelling public use/reason for eminent domain that would find support in our Borough Master Plan documents, particularly the 1974 drafts which highlighted the extreme shortage of school expansion acreage in the Borough.