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Resident urges township to publish housing needs assessment as master plan draft advances
Summary
At the Feb. 10 meeting a resident raised procedural concerns about the draft master plan, saying a housing needs assessment referenced in the draft appendix has not been released to the public and asking the board to ensure the public can review work the township commissioned.
Resident Kyle (address given at the meeting) used the public-comment period on Feb. 10 to ask the board to intervene in the master-plan process and make a commissioned housing needs assessment publicly available.
Kyle said the draft master plan’s appendix references a forthcoming full housing needs assessment but that planning‑commission members had removed the assessment from the publicly posted draft. He asked trustees to ensure that “everything that the public paid for should be able to be viewed and seen,” and warned that current zoning provisions — particularly an R1E overlay that he said increases minimum lot sizes and limits rebuilding — could make it harder to replace small, older houses if owners on fixed incomes cannot maintain them. He said the housing assessment indicates a small number of lower-income or fixed‑income residents could be at risk of losing homes.
Trustee Margaret Shelton and other trustees present described a versioning process for the master‑plan documents: the original consultant draft will be retained as “version 0” and subsequent planning‑commission edits will be tracked as iterations. Shelton said that approach will preserve the original consultant product and make later changes transparent to the public. Board members and several trustees discussed the balance between preserving open space and ensuring housing options and said the planning commission will continue deliberations at upcoming meetings.
Kyle and others argued the omission of the housing needs assessment weakens public review because residents cannot comment on material the township recorded as forthcoming; trustees said they will follow up with planning‑staff and ensure the document‑control/versioning steps are clear to the public.
Ending: Trustees asked planning staff to ensure version tracking and to provide clarity on when and where residents will be able to review the housing needs assessment before the planning commission finalizes recommendations to the board.
