Good evening, my name is Mike Grobbel and I live in the Manors at Central Park at 49997 Lexington Ave. East.  I am one of the three members of the Board of Directors of our Condo Association and the only one who is a co-owner and resident of the Manors.  I speak tonight not for our Board, but as a representative of our condo co-owners and an individual citizen.

For the record, let me also state that my property taxes are paid in full.  Unfortunately, the owner of Manors Lots 1-15  cannot say the same about the property taxes on these lots, which are the subject of the proposal that is in front of you tonight.  On March 1^st, 2008, these 15 lots were forfeited to the County Treasurer for non-payment of the property taxes.  On Feb. 6^th, 2009 Judge David Viviano is scheduled to conduct a Judicial Foreclosure Hearing on these fifteen parcels, which are in arrears by an amount totaling nearly $13,000.

To be fair, it needs to be noted that the petitioner, Lombardo Homes, is not the one who failed to pay those property taxes. Still, Lombardo Homes was required to show proof to the Township that they have some kind of a legal or financial interest in these properties in order to have received the public hearing on this request.  While this kind of situation is perfectly legal, it’s a classic example of how developers can “game the system” to the detriment of our tax revenue collections while at the same time asking for favorable consideration from the same governmental bodies that are getting stiffed.

I always like to see maximum transparency in the way government operates and there are ways the Board can prevent these embarrassing situations from happening in the future.  You could easily require that the tax payment status of all properties coming before you be identified in your packet of  background information.  Another alternative would be to require that a petitioner not only show proof of their legal or financial interest in a property but also require that all taxes be fully paid up on the properties in question before the Planning Department can accept their paperwork and begin the review process.  In the case of this proposal, if you somehow decide to approve it tonight, perhaps you could also include a condition that the delinquent taxes be immediately paid in full instead of three months from now at the redemption deadline.

Regarding the disposition of the petitioner’s request for the proposed changes to the Manors site plan, this case ought to be referred back to the Planning Commission for further discussion.  I say this because of three statements made by the Lombardo Homes representatives after the close of the public comment portion of the Nov. 24^th Planning Commission public hearing which should have elicited some discussion among the Commission members prior to making their recommendation, but which did not.

The first statement was the petitioner’s “clarification” of an explanation given by Mr. Wynn in response to a question asked by one of the Planning Commissioners about when Lombardo Homes had been given permission to include two-story product in the adjacent Kensington condominium project.  A few minutes after Mr. Wynn gave his answer, Mr. Lombardo twice stated that Mr. Wynn’s answer needed clarification because he claimed that he had received approval for the Kensington two-story designs in the original PUD site plans.  The issue of how the two-story product came to be approved for the Kensington condos is relevant to the residents of the Manors only because we want to know what the correct process is so that we don’t wake up one morning with something architecturally different in the middle of our development like the Kensington folks did.  However, you'd think the Planning Commission would want to have the public record reflect the actual order of events instead of a conflicting account.  Instead, the Planning Commission was content to leave the residents in the audience scratching our heads and wishing for a clarification of the clarification.

The second statement was the assertion made by the petitioner that the "transition from single family to multiple family should happen in a rear yard relationship".   While this proposed site plan modification has nothing to do with a change in densities since Lots 1-15 would each still have a single family detached condominium dwelling on them, I think the point he was trying to make is that he believes the Planning Commission’s original Central Park PUD site plan is flawed because it uses Central Park North and a green belt as the visual transition zone between the visually diverse architecture of the single family dwellings on the south side of Central Park North and the visually common architecture of the condominiums on the north side of the street.   His proposal would make that visual transition happen in the rear yards of Lots 1-15, despite the fact that the Planning Commission’s original visual transition zone is already built and in place just to the west along Manors Lots 16-32.  One might have expected the Planning Commission to have discussed the petitioner’s contention that their original planning philosophy was flawed and then arrive at a consensus that either

a)      he is right, or

b)      perhaps his approach makes sense in just this limited situation, or

c)      their original approach was - and still is - right. 

Instead, the Commission just accepted his contention without discussion and recommended approval, so by default, they apparently agree with Mr. Lombardo about this and that the transition of visual appearances between the existing homes and condos just to the west along Central Park North now represent an example of poor planning.  I don’t remember hearing any residents expressing displeasure with the way this section looks at any of the meetings.

The third statement involved the only data offered by the petitioner to support his proposal to change the style of the single family buildings approved for Lots 1-15 from ranches to two-story residences.  He told the Planning Commission that the market has shifted since 2003 and that Lombardo Homes’ 2008 year-to-date sales had been 160 units, 138 of which were single family residences.  Given the specifics of this proposal, one might have expected the Planning Commission to have then asked him how many of the 138 were two-story dwellings and how many were ranches and what was the magnitude of the alleged trend away from ranches.  However, since no one questioned his "data", it suggests to me that the Planning Commission voted on something they did not fully understand.

Having said all this, referring this back to the Planning Commission might not be the best course of action to take tonight.  That’s because when I mentioned this possibility to some of my neighbors, their response was basically “no way – we don’t trust them and it would just be a waste of time”.  Sadly, I have to agree with them.  Besides their lack of curiosity exhibited during the Nov. 24^th public hearing, I was disappointed by the Planning Commission's unwillingness to treat their approved Central Park PUD and its modifications as the finely-crafted piece of negotiated planning that it should be, along with their failure to show any sense of ownership or protection of it.  A PUD allows the Planning Commission and Board of Trustees to negotiate with a developer to produce a mutually satisfactory site plan that is roughly the equivalent of contract zoning and subdividing, which is forbidden under your regular zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations.  Despite the added leverage they have under the PUD ordinance, the Planning Commission instead told Lombardo Homes and a small group of us residents to meet separately and work out  the issues and concerns that the residents had brought to the Planning Commission's attention in the Feb. and Sept. meetings. This delegation of responsibility produced the major concession of future ranch clusters on Walter and Stebbins Ct. for the Kensington folks, but not much else  in the way of satisfaction for the Manors and other residents of Central Park. 

What will it take to satisfy both the residents and the petitioner?  Here’s what I think needs to happen.

1. The Board needs to address the residents’ fears that this proposal is going to further damage the already shrunken values of our homes.  While their concerns may be valid, I think they also have to be placed in perspective with the magnitude of the fallout received from the recent crash of the housing and credit markets.  I have been telling the Manors residents I serve, that with only 90 out of 167 units built and sold, the Manors Association is in a precarious position and the longer the unbuilt lots remain that way, the more precarious our situation gets and the longer our unit's values will continue to decline or stagnate.   For example, while 100% of our streets and street lighting are already installed, along with 70 to 80% of our sidewalks, driveways, lawns and landscaping, the cost to maintain all this has to be supported by just the owners of the 53% of total units that have been built and sold so far.  Also, it is now much tougher to get a mortgage on a new condo in a development like ours that is less than 75% complete.  Furthermore, since the Planning Commission’s September study meeting I have investigated the possible long-term impact to the Association’s budget resulting from having to maintain the added architectural diversity being proposed for these 15 lots.  While it will add some incremental costs, I now believe they are relatively manageable, particularly since Lombardo has reduced the number of unique model floor plans being requested from 11 to 5.  Therefore, I do not believe that there is a need to revise the Manors Master Deed to reassign responsibility for those added costs to the eventual 15 owners, as has been recommended by the Planning Commission despite my objections at their November 24^th public hearing.  The best way to insure appropriate appearances and yard and exterior building maintenance on these 15 units would be for the Manors Association to continue to have the financial responsibility for it and I ask that you remove the Master Deed modification condition if you decide to approve this proposal. 

2. Please have among yourselves the discussion that the Planning Commission declined to hold regarding the relative importance (or lack thereof) in maintaining the visual and architectural continuity of all the buildings in the Manors as defined in your original Central Park PUD site plans.  Those of us who have purchased a condo in the Manors bought there on your promise that it was to be a collection of 167 two and three bedroom, visually similar, all-ranch-style condos.  This proposal revises 9% of the total units and makes them three and four bedroom, visually different, two-story condos.  If you are going to approve this proposal, can you explain and justify it to us based on the unique location of these 15 lots and at the same time, can you state for the record that you still share the original vision for the remainder of the development of the Manors?