HOW DID THIS APPLICATION EVEN LAND UP ON THE PLANNING BOARD'S PUBLIC MEETING AGENDA?

Once again, there are some concerning questions which are worthy of getting answered by the Lakewood Township Planning Board!

The New Jersey Municipal Land Use Law requires all land use board applicants to submit a Certificate of Ownership of Applicant.

Specifically, N.J.S.A. 40:55D-48.1 provides:

A corporation or partnership applying to a planning board... for approval of a site to be used for commercial purposes shall list the names and addresses of all stockholders or individual partners...

This regulation is very strict:

N.J.S.A. 40:55D-48.3 provides:

No planning board... shall approve the application of any corporation or partnership which does not comply with this act.

N.J.S.A. 40:55D-48.4 further stipulates:

Any corporation or partnership which conceals the names of the stockholders... shall be subject to a  fine of $1,000 to $10,000 which shall be recovered in the name of the municipality in... court... pursuant to "The Penalty Enforcement Law."

So... It would therefore seem reasonable that an application that gets submitted to the Planning Board, and is reviewed by Administrator Ally Morris, Attorney John Jackson Esq. and Engineer Terry Vogt, should not make its way onto the Board's public hearing meeting agenda if the Certificate of Ownership of Applicant is left blank.

Right??

Apparently, wrong, unless "we the people" complain. Which is what happened in this case.

Back in 2017, the Board granted minor subdivision and major site plan approval to Zichron Chaim, Inc for construction of their yeshiva on New Hampshire Avenue south of Oak Street.

The site plan has been constructed, however, apparently the subdivision was never perfected and filed, and by now it has lapsed.

Congregation Talmud Torah Toras Yechiel is now reapplying for the same minor subdivision approval already granted to Zichron Chaim. (Likely they will return to the Board for a future site plan application on the Oak Street portion of the parcel, as shown below):

The application, which is represented by Attorney Miriam Weinstein Esq., was submitted with a blank Certificate of Ownership of Applicant form.

As shown below, it was signed, but no names are filled in for the owners of the applicant.

Only after a member of the public asked Board Administrator Ally Morris how the application made its way onto the Board's public meeting agenda despite that the Statutorily required Certificate was not filled in, then it was properly filled in!

This is shocking because, as noted above, the Board is legally prohibited from approving an application which does not comply with the requirement to list the names and addresses of all stockholders or individual partners!

It appears that the 👀 of the gatekeepers have recently been kept shut tight...

As previously reported here on FAA News, the Board's last public meeting agenda included an application which did not have the statutorily required signed authorization from the property owner!

We the people deserve some explanations!

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