This site was created to open the public's eyes to how the Mayor and City Council of Gloucester City and surrounding Camden County Towns in NJ Spend your Tax Dollars. This site is also expanding to cover Gloucester County as well. To contact this site email [email protected].
Earlier this month Gloucester Township Patch reported that the Township lost in the state appellate division after the Township’s Planning Board refused to allow a local landowner to build on land near the GEMS Superfund site. Below is the Patch article and invoices for the case. The Township spent over $24,000.00 More documents to follow.
A developer can proceed with a 5-year-old plan to build 18 homes in the shadow of the Gloucester Environmental Management Services (GEMS) landfill following an Appellate Court decision last month that labeled the township Planning Board's decision to shoot down a preliminary site plan "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable."
The homes would be built in the Briar Lake subdivision, which is located off Erial Road in the township's Blackwood section.
It appears the township will not fight the New Jersey Appellate Court's decision, which was rendered July 11, by taking the case to the state Supreme Court level.
"I don't know if that makes sense," Mayor David Mayer said Tuesday.
The Planning Board rejected applicant John H. Hooper's residential development plans, which were submitted Aug. 1, 2006, on environmental-safety grounds, according to the Appellate Court decision (see attached PDF beneath the map and photo).
"The Board cannot deny preliminary subdivision approval based on general welfare considerations. Even if it could do so, there is no evidence in this case of any danger to human health present on Lot 1," where a site plan indicated 18 of 20 proposed homes would be built, the court's July 11 decision reads.
The three-judge panel ordered the Planning Board to grant preliminary site plan approval for Lot 1, with conditions previously attached by the board's expert, in their decision.
The Planning Board resolution rejecting the site plan in its entirety contained only two reasons for denial:
The applicant failed to provide all necessary information to allow it to make a "reasonsed decision" in the best interset of public welfare and health.
The applicant failed to satisfy the positive and negative criteria for variances it sought on the single-home lots.
During its review of the application, the Planning Board and its engineer, John Cantwell, expressed concerns over the potential for contaminated groundwater given the proposed development's proximity to GEMS, a Superfund site.
The Appellate Court ruling notes the judges' opinion that the Planning Board not only wrongly ruled against the site plan, but overstepped its authority with many of the actions it required the developer to take.
"By requiring Hooper to conduct soil testing and provide information about trenching, the Board adopted ad hoc standards that are beyond the municipal ordinance and subdivision standards. Doing so was arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable," the decision reads.
Like the Superior Court judge who heard the first appeal, the Appellate Court judges upheld the Planning Board's rejection of the variances for the single-home lots at the ends of the split Primrose Lane.
The township, which was represented by Planning Board Solicitor Michael McKenna, challenged the appeal filed by landowner Bristow Merritt LLC based on it assertion the limited-liability corporation lacked "standing."
The Appellate Court judges—Catherine Cuff, Marie P. Simonelli and Douglas Fasciale—noted in their opinion that following the lower court's ruling "Hooper assigned his rights, title and interest in the plans and application to Bristow Merritt."
They added: "The application was not unique to Hooper, the requested variances (for two proposed single-home lots) would adhere to the land in the traditional land-use sense, and the variances would be available to Bristow Merritt and any subsequent owner of the lots. Accordingly, Bristow Merritt has standing to bring this appeal.
Bristow Merritt had not contacted the township to move forward with the proposed housing development as of Wednesday, according to Ken Lechner, the township's director of community development and planning.
Message Patch left at the Voorhees office of the attorney who represented Bristow Merritt on appeal, Michael J. Ward IV, were not returned.
In July Gloucester City & Camden County The Truth reported that Washington Township’s Fire District released the contract of Fire Chief E. John Hoffman. The district denied OPRA requests earlier this year for his contract, the IAFF union contract and other similar requests. Recently through OPRA attorney invoices of the Washington Township Fire District Solicitor billed over $800.00 on OPRA/OPMA issues and over $400.00 for research on OPRA and OPMA.
What research did he do? Contracts are items that have been ruled by the NJ Government Records Council as readily available.
In addition the Solicitor is a contractor and provides services to the Fire District. Why then is he filling out employee time sheet?
The Borough of Pine Hill provides employees with Aetna Health Insurance; however when purchasing prescription drugs they cannot use their Aetna card but rather are provided with an Express Scripts card when filling prescriptions. However employees receive a reimbursement check from Aetna which must be turned over to the Borough of Pine Hill and they only receive reimbursement for prescriptions if they have prescriptions filled at Rite Aid pharmacy. As a result of recent OPRA requests filed in Pine Hill, there is no agreement or contract in writing with Rite Aid. When an OPRA was put in for the contract or agrement with Rite Aide the response was none exists and there is not a written contract or agrement. Pine Hill provided the following letter.
Is this legal?
What is going on?
How can a major corporation like Rite Aid just have a verbal agreement?
Earlier this year Harvest Market Missionary Ministries filed suit in U.S.District Court against the Borough of Pine Hill for not allowing the organization to gather for worship services. After filing in court the group reached a settlement agreement but not before John “Whips and Chains” Kearney got more taxpayers money.
Earlier this month the Courier Post ran the below story. Below is the story as well as court documents from the case which the city tried to take all the way up to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals which is based in Philadelphia after loosing in the United States District Court.
Nude-dance club receives 9-year property tax break By JIM WALSH Courier-Post Staff
A Gloucester City nude-dance club will pay no property taxes for nine years as part of its settlement of a lawsuit against the city.
Gloucester City also must pay $35,000 to the operator of Cheerleaders Gentlemen's Club, a Route 130 club that sued successfully after municipal officials tried to close it down last year.
The tax breaks and the one-time payment -- with a total value estimated at more than $180,000 -- are being provided because a federal judge in August ruled that the city had violated the club's constitutional rights. As a result, the club could require the city to pay its legal fees of some $157,000, said Jeffrey Baron, a Voorhees attorney who helped argue the case for the business.
"But the town could never have paid that amount of money (in a lump sum)," said Baron, part of a legal team for two related firms -- MAG Entertainment, which runs Cheerleaders, and MAG Realty, the club's landlord.
Much like consumers with a credit card, the city is paying more to settle its debt over an extended period, said John Kearney, the municipal solicitor.
"MAG has to write a check and pay their lawyers (now). They're not going to be getting that back until over the course of nine years," said Kearney, who noted the agreement also requires Cheerleaders to upgrade its property.
The two sides submitted their settlement agreement in June to U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler in Camden. The city last week dropped its appeal of Kugler's ruling on the Cheerleaders Too suit, essentially ending the case.
Under the settlement, property taxes will be waived for the club's site from 2011 through 2015 and from 2017 through 2020. "It's a full abatement of (property) taxes," said Baron.
He said the gap between 2015 and 2017 is required because the law limits such abatements to five-year periods.
According to tax records, the club has an annual property tax bill of about $16,400 -- for nine-year savings of about $147,600.
The legal fight began after a setback for Cheerleaders in February 2010. That's when MAG Entertainment gave up its liquor license after a long fight with New Jersey's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
The state agency sought to seize the license after a drunken patron, who had been ejected from Cheerleaders, killed two people while driving the wrong way on Route 130.
Shortly before it relinquished its license, court papers say, MAG Entertainment requested "clarification" from Gloucester City's planning/zoning board that it could continue to offer "go-go dancing entertainment" as a BYOB establishment. At that time, the firm noted its Route 130 site -- formerly home to the Red Oak Tavern, the Dollhouse and the Harem -- had hosted dancers for more than 30 years.
But the municipal board rebuffed the company, saying the loss of the license represented a "substantial change in the use of the property." The ruling, delivered seven days after the club had given up its license, said Cheerleaders could no longer present dancers because the club had lost its "pre-existing, non-conforming use status" under local zoning rules.
When the case went to court, Kugler rejected the board's action and derided the city's land-use rules as "Byzantine." The judge accepted MAG's argument that Gloucester City's zoning rules identified no site where a business could offer "constitutionally protected" nude dancing.
The city must identify such a site as part of the settlement agreement. Baron said no action's been taken at this time, but that he expects Cheerleaders' property eventually will become the one area zoned for adult entertainment.
Cheerleaders also is to upgrade its site, adding a deck and exterior improvements. The club also has agreed to erect a fence as a buffer between its site and nearby homes. Cheerleaders abuts the former Chatham Square apartment complex, which city officials now are seeking to redevelop as a townhome community.
The Gloucester City dispute is not related to a recent case in Mount Ephraim, where the operator of a nude-dance club sued to block a borough ordinance that banned BYOBs. That suit, filed in federal court in May, was voluntarily dismissed this month by an attorney for Jersey Girls Gentlemen's Cabaret on the Black Horse Pike.
The operator of Jersey Girls, Gregorio Russo, agreed in June to pay combined fines of $12,000 for six violations of the borough's BYOB ordinance.
The Mount Ephraim dispute did not involve the right to show unclad dancers. A previous owner of the club, once known as the Fantasy Show Bar, won that battle in the 1980s with a case that eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court.