The Town Council had a meeting on Monday nights. Here are the highlights.
We officially set aside the funds to purchase and renovate 46 Lakeside Avenue, otherwise known as the OLL Parking Lot - totaling $2.25 million. I am very excited that we were able to complete this strategic purchase. We believe this parking lot will allow us to generate revenue for the Township, as this entire lot will be metered. We will be adding high speed electric vehicle charging stations, and we learned at our meeting we already received a grant to offset the costs of adding the stations. Long term parking permits will be moved to this lot to create more space behind HBW for downtown parking. This will also add parking capacity, which will help with Verona Park parking and, longer term, parking for residential apartments that may be built in our town center.
We have applied for a special grant to offset the costs of this purchase. If received, this purchase will be a revenue generator for the township in about 2-3 years. More on this project to come.
We introduced an ordinance to make zoning changes to the C-2 zone, specifically to add co-working spaces and skilled nursing facilities to this zone. If you live near a C-2 zone, you may want to take a look at this ordinance. You can find our zoning map here: https://www.veronanj.org/media/Engineering/Zoning%20Forms/ZR-04%20Township%20of%20Verona%20Zone%20Map.pdf
We also introduced mostly minor changes to our ordinances governing our Advisory Committees. One significant change is that we are reducing the number of volunteers on Sustainable Verona from 8 to 7 and we are increasing the number of volunteers on the Recreation Advisory Committee from 6 to 9.
Comments on any introduced ordinance can be made by contacting the entire Council here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.
Under resolutions, we accepted grants for the National Opioid Settlement, Sustainable Jersey, and the Municipal Alliance. We also authorized a vehicle purchase for the police department. We also authorized an emergency contract to do urgent repairs to the communications building next to our cell tower. Unfortunately, this is another example of how previous Administrations did not property address infrastructure issues. Work is being done to fix significant structural issues with the communications building.
In new business we spent a fair amount of time talking about zoning changes to the Town Center Zone, including updating the definitions of businesses that are allowed and changes to the zoning requirements. If there is one line of zoning code that is holding back redevelopment of our downtown - it is the line that states that there must be an even distribution of uses in a building. This means that if someone wanted to re-develop a building and have both commercial and residential, it would need to be 50/50 split in terms of space. In reality, developers and investors want to build building with commercial on the bottom and two floors of residential on top. We are exploring making that change along with a few others. I encourage residents to be engaged in our discussions on the downtown as this progresses further.
We then went into Executive Session to discuss a variety of issues.
If you have any comments, please send them to the entire Council here! https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.
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