The other side of Asbury Park, 2015. Paul Goldfinger photo
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.
A. Park can build ample buildings because they have the space to have off-street parking. Thus they can comply with the State RSIS standards.
But Ocean Grove doesn’t have such land and thus should not allow any building that cannot comply. That means no more condos or Mary’s Place sort of projects in OG, unless parking can be provided.
The one exemption in OG from RSIS should be single family homes, as Jack Bredin suggested at a recent Home Groaners meeting; but his motion was sadly rejected by Grovers who were clueless. The members could have pushed the rogue HOA Board to do the right thing to save the town from further abuse by politicians and developers.
What a disgraceful travesty!
Meanwhile, just keep on dancing around the problems.
At the last meeting of the OGHOA, a presentation was made by the HOA regarding RSIS. All of a sudden, these folks became experts when they ignored the issue for years.
Fran of OG advised us that the HOA Power Point slide-show regarding RSIS can be found on their web site (OGHOA.org). That presentation is long and convoluted, but the first slide stands out:
As you can see, they say, “Parking in Ocean Grove is NOT governed by RSIS” If that is true, then why has Neptune Twp. applied on two occasions in recent years for an exemption if they are already exempted?
Consider this excerpt from an exceptional RSIS review on Blogfinger by journalist Charles Layton on Feb. 14, 2011:
“On January 25, 2005, Neptune received a letter from the state Division of Codes and Standards pointing out the obvious — that our local ordinance violates the RSIS and is therefore legally invalid. However, the letter said Neptune could apply for special permission, in the form of what’s called a “special area standard.”
On October 26, 2007, Neptune did apply. It asked the New Jersey Site Improvement Advisory Board, which enforces RSIS, to let it retain its own separate regulations. Its application laid out all the arguments mentioned above.
On February 21, 2008 and again on September 18, 2008 the board held hearings on Neptune’s request.
On September 29, 2009, Neptune received a letter from the chairman of the board stating that there was insufficient evidence to justify a special standard for Ocean Grove. This letter reiterated that the Neptune ordinance was inconsistent with the RSIS and therefore invalid. However, the letter said the board was “willing to work with the Township” if it decided to submit a new or different request.
During all these years of negotiation, of course, quite a number of residences have been built in Ocean Grove, on Ocean Pathway and elsewhere. According to the RSIS law, those residences should have included off-street parking. But, because the buildings followed Neptune’s law rather than state law, no such parking was provided. In fact, by local law, the builders were forbidden to have off-street parking even if they’d wanted it.”
Last November, Kevin Chambers wrote an article for BF (based on a 2011 article by him) on this subject, and he said, “Even though all the committee members of the RSIS Board were well aware of Ocean Grove’s problems having visited Ocean Grove, the RSIS Board was forced to deny Neptune the “Special Area Standard” designation since Neptune’s zoning for Ocean Grove was and is in violation of the MLUL.” (MLUL is the Municipal Land Use Law of New Jersey.)
