The Livingston Township Council and the Livingston Public Schools Board of Education held a “Five on Five” meeting on Monday, November 11, where they discussed updates on their collaborative efforts throughout the past eight months. The two governing bodies last met publicly in March.
Development Projects
Three housing projects - located on Okner Parkway, at the comer of Northfield Road and South LivingstonAvenue, and behind the Ambulatory C are Center - are currently under construction. These will consist of roughly 1,000 units, 20 percent of which must be affordable housing. Based on standards applied from a Rutgers study on the state’s housing developments, township manager Barry Lewis projected that roughly 280 students will enter the district from these three developments.
“That’s over roughly a ten year build out and spread across 12 grades,” said Lewis.
The fourth round of affordable housing is upcoming, but Lewis said that the township “will continue to try to the greatest degree possible to zone for one or two bedrooms, or smaller units, to try to limit the number of school aged children.”
Township attorney Jarrid Kantor added that “Statutorally, the UHAC (Uniform Housing Affordability Controls) provides that 30 percent of the low or moderate income units must be two bedroom and 20 percent of the low or moderate income must be three bedroom units, so the township has no discretion when it comes to the affordable housing units and the bedroom distribution. We only have some discretion when it comes to market rate units.”
Lewis noted that special needs housing and 55 and over units are applicable for affordable housing and will yieldno impact on the Livingston Public School system, so the Council is trying to maximize those units.
Deputy Mayor Ed Meinhardt said that these numbers came from the state’s legislature in Trenton.
“We all need fair share, but it’s also part of a fair share for our numbers as well,” he said. “This is what we are cooperating with and going forward with, not that we came out and sought these numbers ourselves.”
LPS Bus Depot
The Board is considering using the space behind the school district’s (Continued on Page A-6) amount.
DPW Facility
Prior to the start of the meeting, the Council pulled a resolution from the agenda that would have rejected all proposals received for designbuild services for the construction of the new DPW facility on Industrial Parkway.
On October 1, the town received four qualification proposals for the project. They were from Dobco, Epic Management, JosephA. Natoli Construction, and Terminal Construction. On November 6, Dobco and Terminal Construction sent the town their proposals for the project.
Township officials then determined that the price proposals for the project “substantially exceeded” the town’s appropriation for the project. As a result, the Council was prepared to reject them.
The Council instead decided to pull the rejection and see if officials could negotiate the cost and get it to a number the town could justify and appropriate the additional funds. This would potentially keep the project on pace to begin by the end of the year, a goal stated by officials at recent meetings; the initial hope was to approve a company for the design build during the November 12 meeting.
“This gives us the best path to try to go forward,” township manager Barry Lewis said.
