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Council reports executive-session discussion on affordable housing litigation; mayor outlines Mount Laurel constraints
Summary
The township attorney said the council discussed pending affordable-housing litigation in executive session with no official action. Mayor James Barberio described state Mount Laurel mandates and a prior scarce-resource order affecting development and water allocation.
The Parsippany (Troy Hills) Township Council said it discussed a pending affordable-housing litigation matter in a brief executive session on April 1; no formal action was taken, the township attorney said.
Township Attorney Michael Lavery told the council after it returned to open session that the body “emerged from executive session at 07:22PM where we discussed 1, pending litigation matter, which was affordable housing litigation. No official action was taken.” Lavery added that copies of the executive-session minutes will be made available when the council determines releasing them will not harm the public interest.
Mayor James Barberio used his remarks later in the meeting to place the litigation and housing debate in context for residents. Barberio said the township is in litigation with the New Jersey Builders Association and defended the council’s handling of housing policy as compliance with state law.
“You’re gonna have to build housing in your township, and that’s throughout the whole entire state,” Barberio said, referring to the Mount Laurel doctrine. “When someone says, you know, the mayor is doing it no. The mayor is not. The mayor is following the law and the mandates that we’re required to meet.”
Barberio said the township previously operated under a scarce-resource order that directed available water to affordable-housing units, a restriction he said had to be lifted to allow certain commercial and private developments to proceed. He said securing water availability required repairing two failed wells that together cost roughly $2 million and that lifting the order enabled developments such as Topgolf and Chick-fil-A to proceed.
A resident who identified himself as Nick of Lake Iowaca used his public-comment time to ask whether a withdrawn ordinance on Lackawanna Avenue included protections for existing trees. Nick said he wanted “to remain the tree line that’s in place today,” and asked that the developer place any dry basing “facing away from the houses so that there’s no…noise coming to the houses.” He also said the existing trees appeared to be “probably 30 plus, 40 plus years old.” The council did not take formal action on the comment during the meeting.
The transcript does not link the stipulation of settlement approved later in the meeting to the executive-session litigation discussion; the settlement’s text and the litigation’s detailed status were not provided in the public portion of the record.
The council said it will release executive-session minutes when confidentiality no longer applies.
