Ridgewood planner explains details of controversial ordinance
AUGUST 7, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2014, 2:39 PM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
One Ridgewood ordinance – 3066 – has become known by many Ridgewood residents as the reason the village proceeded with Planning Board hearings on multiple controversial applications for master plan amendments at once this past year.
However, the reason may actually be village management more so than the ordinance, according to Village Planner Blais Brancheau.
Brancheau, who wrote the ordinance more than seven years ago, explained its history at Wednesday’s Village Council meeting.
The ordinance, which was adopted in July 2007, did not force the recent Planning Board hearings. State law implies that applicants are allowed to petition municipal governments for master plan amendments, he said, but boards do not have to go through a formal hearing.
“Nowhere does Ordinance 3066 commit either the Planning Board or this board to go to a hearing,” Brancheau told the council. “You would only go to a hearing if you’re done doing preliminary analysis, to say, ‘We think this has some merit.’ …We shouldn’t go to hearings unless we have that feeling.
“You don’t go to a hearing on a strip mall in the residential zone until you feel it has merit,” he continued. “There has to be an overwhelming, a compelling reason, a strong sense that this is something that can be good for the community as a whole.”
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3066 states “Upon completing its review of the application, the Village Council or Planning Board, as applicable, shall take whatever action it deems to be appropriate under the circumstances and advise the applicant in writing of its decision.”
Under current ordinance, try responding to a developer that has spent money developing an application and preliminary analysis, “this is a no-brainer”, we aren’t having a hearing.
Maybe, I’m wrong. Perhaps it is all just coincidence that 3066 was passed and we now have had this flurry of development applications.
This ordinance was pushed through when Pfund was mayor in the months leading up to Valley Hospital Master Plan proposal before the Planning Board. If you want find the author of this then look to Mr Collins and the other Valley attorneys and the Ridgewood Village attorney. It might have been Brancheau who was tasked to prepare #3066, but it was others who were pulling the strings. Remember that at the opening Valley Hospital presentation to the Council on Sept 27 2006, it was Pfund who told Audrey Meyers “off camera” (but still amplified for all to hear), “I do not see a problem with this”.