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Saddle River adopts ordinance allowing 100% affordable projects to meet state stormwater standards, prompting legal concerns
Summary
The council approved Ordinance 26-1122 to allow 100% affordable-housing projects to comply with state rather than Saddle River's stricter local stormwater rules. Residents and a planning-board attendee warned the change could conflict with prior planning-board testimony and invite legal challenges; borough counsel said the step is intended to protect the borough's immunity under state affordable-housing law.
The Saddle River mayor and council on July 20 adopted Ordinance 26-1122 on second reading, revising the borough's stormwater code so that 100% affordable-housing projects may meet state stormwater standards rather than the borough's more stringent local regulations.
David Lafferty, borough counsel, said the change is a targeted exception for 100% affordable projects. He explained that local regulations had been made more stringent than the state's standards and that developers sometimes cannot meet the local standards while still delivering 100% affordable units. "If, hypothetically, the developer could not build 42 units on this property, but they could build, for instance, 32 units, the borough would have to find another location to build 10 affordable units in the borough," Lafferty said, explaining part of the rationale for the ordinance.
Vin Bliel, a resident who participated in prior planning-board hearings, said engineers had testified the applicant would meet Saddle River's stormwater requirements and warned the new ordinance could amount to an "end run" that might render earlier approvals vulnerable. "I question whether it's even legal because the application was approved based on the testimony that was presented at the planning board meeting," Bliel said.
Borough engineer Martin added that the local stormwater rules were deliberately more stringent than state requirements and that meeting the local standard can be cost-prohibitive for some sites; the ordinance would require those 100% affordable projects to meet state standards but not fall below them. Martin described the local standard as a driver of additional site costs that, in some cases, make projects infeasible.
Council members debated whether adoption this evening could affect specific approvals already granted by the planning board, and Lafferty advised that whether the ordinance applies to a given property depends on the planning-board record and any conditions placed on approvals. After discussion the council voted to adopt the ordinance on second reading; the clerk read that the ordinance "has been approved upon 2nd reading and will be posted on the Saddle River website." No immediate legal challenge was filed at the meeting, but several speakers said they expected litigation could follow.
What happens next: The ordinance will be posted as required and the borough noted it will consult with affordable-housing counsel and the planning board to clarify how the ordinance applies to pending or approved applications.
