OCEANPORT – Council officials hope to quell a storm of protest by residents upset over the decision to change the municipal environmental commission to a committee, which could curtail its authority.
Borough councilman Robert Proto said the council plans to adopt a resolution at its April 3 workshop meeting to direct the borough’s planning board secretary to submit all site plan applications to the environmental committee for review.
The resolution will also make a recommendation to Oceanport Mayor Jay Coffey that he appoint a member of the environmental committee to the township planning board, ensuring that it will be business as usual for the volunteer group of environmental specialists.
“The council heard two main concerns from the commission members. They wanted continued representation on the planning board and the ability to review plans going in front of the planning board. We’re putting these two into a resolution to assuage the concerns of our volunteers,” added Proto, who said he and other council members met with environmental commission chair Robert Broege following a heated public meeting March 21.
Broege said that, during the meeting, it seemed like the council intended to “take authority away from the commission, in terms of the site plan review process.”
“Since then, we’ve had discussions and it seems like they’d like us to keep going,” Broege added. “The environmental commission is an integral part of this community, like every other community in this area. As long as the authorities remain the same, we owe it to our neighbors to keep going.”
Broege said after that March 21 meeting several members of the volunteer group said they were ready to step down from their posts on the commission. Those decisions to potentially walk away came after several members of the commission and other residents spoke out against the governing body’s decision to adopt an ordinance that appeared to be stripping the group of its oversight permissions.
Despite the public push-back, the borough council unanimously adopted the ordinance, leading Coffey to invoke a mayoral veto for the first time since winning the seat in the 2015 general election.
Another resolution on the docket at Thursday’s workshop meeting is one that, if adopted, would override that veto.
“It’s a fruitless effort because they have the votes to override it, but it was more of a statement if nothing else,” Coffey said. “The way people are being treated at these meetings is wrong. When you have 50 residents show up to oppose you, and so many of them speaking passionately and intelligently against an ordinance, read the room and table it for further discussion.”
Council president Stephen Solan said the decision to transition from a commission to a committee was because the group had “not been acting as a commission for a very long time.”
Solan added that as a commission, the volunteer group is expected to act as an arm of the government, but had not been providing meeting agendas, minutes or annual reports.
But what prompted the adoption of the ordinance was when the commission failed to provide comments on a controversial amendment to a site plan that proposed the construction of a satellite campus for New Jersey City University on a parcel of land located in the Oceanport section of Fort Monmouth.
“One of the arguments we heard was that we should want an extra set of eyes on things like site plan applications coming before the planning board. Then we solicit comments from all of our professionals concerning the site plan amendment and never hear anything from the environmental commission? Shouldn’t they want to be heard on something as important as this?” Solan asked.
Thomas Cox, the environmental commission vice chair said that not commenting on the amended campus site plan should not be held against the commission.
Proto said the transition from a commission to a committee is a move that will relieve the group of regulatory burdens, such as providing minutes, agendas and annual reports, and merely formalize how the group has been regularly operating.
