Planning Board Public Meeting Minutes 20140805

The following minutes are a summary of the Planning Board meeting of August 5, 2014. For more detailed information, interested parties may request an audio recording of the meeting from the Board Secretary for a fee.
Call to Order & Statement of Compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act: Chairman Nalbantian called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The following members were present: Mayor Aronsohn, Ms. Bigos, Councilwoman Knudsen, Chairman Nalbantian, Ms. Peters, Mr. Thurston, Ms. Altano and Mr. Abdalla. Also present were: Gail Price, Esq. and Katie Razin, Esq., Board Attorneys; Blais Brancheau, Village Planner, Chris Rutishauser, Village Engineer and Jane Wondergem, Board Secretary. Mr. Joel, Mr. Reilly, and Ms. Dockray were absent.
7:05 p.m. – Executive Session - The Board adjourned to Executive Session to discuss pending litigation.
Call to Order & Statement of Compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act: The Board returned from executive session and Chairman Nalbantian called the public portion of the meeting to order at 8:05 p.m. The following members were present: Mayor Aronsohn, Ms. Bigos, Councilwoman Knudsen, Chairman Nalbantian, Ms. Peters, Mr. Thurston, Ms. Altano and Mr. Abdalla.
Correspondence received by the Board – Ms. Wondergem said the Board received correspondence from Mr. Brancheau regarding Ordinance 3066.
Public Comments on Topics not Pending Before the Board – Ed Boscarino, 299 Goffle Road, said he was speaking on behalf of Goffle Road residents regarding a zone change for his neighborhood to a commercial zone. Mr. Boscarino read a written statement. Chairman Nalbantian suggested putting the issue on a future agenda for discussion.
Public Hearing on Amendment to the Land Use Plan Element of the Master Plan – AH-2, B-3-R, C-R & C Zone Districts – Following is the transcript of this portion of the meeting, prepared by Laura A. Carucci, C.C.R., R.P.R.:
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  At this time, we're going to begin the fourth item, which is a public hearing on the Amendment for the Land Use Plan Element to the Master Plan, the AH 2, B 3 R, C R and C Zone Districts. This is the time when we're going to hear testimony from the Village traffic expert.  Where's Mr. Jahr?
MS. PRICE:  He's down there.  He's coming. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  You want to swear him in? 
MS. PRICE:  Yes, I will.
THE COURT REPORTER:  Sir, do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? 
MR. JAHR:  I do.
J O H N   J A H R, 331 Newman Springs Road, Red Bank, New Jersey, having been duly sworn, testifies as follows:
THE COURT REPORTER:  Thank you. Please be seated and into the microphone state your name, spell it, and give your business address? 
MR. JAHR:  John Jahr, J A H R.  Business address, 331 Newman Springs Road, Red Bank, New Jersey.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Can everybody hear Mr. Jahr? 
MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Move it closer.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Great, thank you. 
MR. JAHR:  How is this? 
MS. PRICE:  Perfect.
MR. JAHR:  That's a lot of sound.
MS. PRICE:  Mr. Jahr, in preparation for tonight's testimony, you have reviewed various documents and prepared certain documents yourself; is that correct.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I have.
MS. PRICE:  And you also were in attendance at the work session that the Board conducted prior to deciding to go into formal hearings on the current Amendment; is that correct.
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  And you provided testimony during those work sessions relative to traffic issues in the CBD.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I have.
MS. PRICE:  And during the time period between the work session conclusion and this evening, have you had an opportunity to attend hearings that this Board has conducted relative to the proposed Amendment.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I have.
MS. PRICE:  And have you had an opportunity to review the traffic testimony that has been proffered on behalf of the proponents for various developments in the CBD. 
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I have.
MS. PRICE:  And in connection with your review, have you also had the opportunity to interact with those experts in connection with ascertaining and obtaining additional information.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I have.
MS. PRICE:  And are you satisfied that you have enough information this evening with which you can render an opinion to this Board and to the public relative to traffic issues in the CBD as they relate to the proposed Master Plan Amendment.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I can.
MS. PRICE:  And you understand that this is not a site plan application for any particular property, but rather consideration of a proposed Master Plan Amendment.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I understand that.
MS. PRICE:  And in terms of documents that you will be using tonight, could you just take a minute and identify those?  I know that you've provided those to the Board secretary and that she has provided those to the Board Members, but if we could just have those identified clearly for the record.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  I provided the Board a memorandum dated July 15th, which is a basic outline of each of the individual applications and some commentary from me, but it's more of a    it exactly represents the information contained in the full reports, which also were provided to the Board.  The Board was provided with three individual letter reports from me dated July 15th; a traffic letter report for the Dayton apartments dated July 15th; a traffic letter report for the Chestnut Village and dated July 15th; the traffic letter report for The Enclave.  July 15th was a busy day. 
In addition to that, I also provided to the Board a memorandum outlining our investigation as to the school routes for these particular developments, and more generally, any type of housing that would be considered in the downtown of Ridgewood.
In addition to that, I did prepare for this evening that    I believe I already shared this with the Board    it's an as of right analysis dated July 11, 2014. 
Yes, that's it (indicating).  And last but not least, I prepared a display board entitled "Trip Generations for Ridgewood Multi Family Housing Redevelopment."  Sadly, we did not put a date on this.
MS. PRICE:  So can we use today's date.
MR. JAHR:  We need to mark it or identify it in some way.
MS. PRICE:  Could we use today's date for the record. 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.  Today's date would be fine.
MS. PRICE:  And so we don't waste time right now, so we can get to the meat of the testimony, during the break, maybe we can have Laura mark all of the official documents. 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  I've affixed today's date to the display board.
MS. PRICE:  So I want to just note that Mr. Bruinooge is not in attendance this evening on behalf of The Enclave.  He had advised us that he would be on vacation this evening, and he reserved the right to conduct future cross examination to the extent necessary of Mr. Jahr.
And Counsel for the other proponents are present, and members of the public are present.  So questions will be allowed at the conclusion and subject to the Chair's discretion in terms of order.
But, Mr. Jahr, why don't you take us through your testimony, in terms of starting with what steps you took since the work session or inclusive of the work session, and your understanding of your charge.
MR. JAHR:  Certainly. 
I'd like to have a half a step before that and just explain why I'm here, why I was engaged, what the purpose of having a traffic expert on this matter is. 
I guess first of all, by way of my credentials, I've been a traffic consultant for 27 years now.  I represent 14 other towns, some very close here in Bergen County:  Emerson, Northvale.  I have been focused    my focus is mainly on representing towns and boards on their behalf for traffic. As you all know, as the developers come to town; they bring traffic experts and they tend to always have the same comment, that there's no impact.  Because we live here in Ridgewood, I spend a lot of here in Ridgewood.  We know that there are some traffic concerns and the Board has    you know, at their discretion, brought me on board to look at the whole picture, to have a    not just look at these individual developments.  There's three on the table now; there's another one that was on the table, went off the table.  There are others considered. 
The idea here is the Board wants to make certain that they're protecting the interests of the town, so they brought me on board to review these matters and to assist them in guiding them with some traffic engineering, because it is a specialty; it is something a little different. 
You know, my experience, that's some of    which was actually mentioned at some of the hearings    is some of the people that live in Ridgewood heard of the work I did in Montvale.  They had a significant rezoning they just did for a commercial    for Wegmans.
Recently, I just received an award, a Smart Growth award, for work I did in Fanwood, very similar to this.  So that's how I got here, all right, because the town's residents, the Board had had a concern.  Okay.
So the next part is    you know, what is    what have I done since I came on board.  Okay?  I've been working here for over a year, almost    right, I think over two years at this point.  And what I had the opportunity to do is spent a significant amount of time in town reviewing the studies that were provided by others, doing traffic counts and evaluation myself.  I have interviewed the police on several occasions.  I have had discussion with the school board.  I've performed site visits to not just these housing    these proposals, but I've had to go and look at other places in town.
Remember, I'm not here just to look at these little things, you know, these particular applications.  We're here to see what can we do to make certain that, if    if the Board does choose to make some changes to the zoning, you know, what other effects could that have from a traffic standpoint. 
I reviewed accidents.  I reviewed, you know, the current status of the traffic signaling in the town.  I've reviewed the parking ordinances.  I've done observations of the parking.  Obviously, I've attended many of these hearings. 
Recently, we did a study of how children get to school from the downtown.  We contacted the school.  We found out, you know, what schools they would go to depending on where they lived. 
And then finally, you know, I am presenting this evening my report that covers all of that.  Okay. 
Now, to give fairness to the developers who came to town and had their traffic consultants come; they were here a couple of months ago.  They did very, very good presentations; they were all very credible in what they presented.  I think that I was particularly happy to see that none of them said we're going to have no traffic impact.  They    not a single traffic engineer came before the public or the Board and said:  We'll have no traffic impact.  They do feel that the traffic impact is minimal because they have the ability    each one of these developments has the ability to have a higher traffic generator in what we call the as of right. 
So from each one of their points of view, you know, they're   they're as small as they could be.  Of course I'm going to look at that and I'm going to try and find, you know, is that accurate, you know, is the information they reported correct. 
What I'd like to do is I'm going to give a brief explanation to the Board for each of the three development projects that are currently under review, and just kind of outline for you, you know, what you've seen with them. 
What I'd like to do is I'm going to take my display board and hand it up to Chris, and let him just send it down while I go through each of one of these.
MR. WEINER:  Excuse me.  I just wanted to clarify something.  I don't want to be jumping up and down.  I want to let Mr. Jahr say what he has to say. 
But I didn't think we had any development projects under review here.
MS. PRICE:  We don't.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  We don't.
MR. WEINER:  Well, this is the problem.  And, you know, our position has always been that to the extent that he's doing a comprehensive traffic here that relates to the Master Plan Amendment and all the properties contained therein, I don't have any problem with that; I think it's good. 
But if we're going to sit here and evaluate the parking at The Enclave, a theoretical concept plan, I don't see why we should waste time with that.  I don't think that that's really pertinent. 
So I wanted to put that objection on the record in advance, and then I'll be quiet.  The Board can decide whether they want to hear it or not. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you.
MR. JAHR:  I didn't understand the objection.
MR. WEINER:  Well, I'll explain.  A lot of the reports deal with specific   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yeah.
MR. WEINER:     evaluations, reports that traffic engineers did for a particular site based on how much traffic is generated, how much parking there is. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Wait   
MR. WEINER:  And what    what kind of impact it has on the driveways as the site, which is not even a real application yet.
MR. JAHR:  I'm not going to do that.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  If I can just interject   
MR. WEINER:  Well, it's in your report, so...
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yeah.  Are you going to speak to the testimony that's been provided by the various   
MR. JAHR:  I certainly feel that I have to.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:     witnesses.  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  I feel strongly   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  So that's the intent, is to comment against the testimony or with regard to testimony that this Board had heard   
MR. JAHR:  Right.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:    in previous times.
MR. WEINER:  And again, I don't want to    I want to let him say whatever you guys want to hear.  I just don't think it's material to what you're deciding here.  It doesn't matter. 
If The Enclave came and said, "We're one of them, and we have this much traffic," who cares? 
If you're saying, "Here's what all the properties have," then    then you should care. 
MS. PRICE:  Well   
MR. WEINER:  I don't see how it helps, but that's my objection; that's all.
MS. PRICE:  Mr. Chairman, let me   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Please.
MS. PRICE:  If I could just respond since Mr. Weiner's noting for the record. 
My question was very specific when I asked Mr. Jahr if he was cognizant of the fact that this was a Master Plan review and not a site plan review, and I believe he responded yes. 
To the extent that the Board has sat through prior hearings, we received information from the three proponents, and those have included traffic reports.  And Mr. Jahr reviewed those    some of those    in work session and attended work sessions and gave information. 
He also spoke, you know, more globally at work session, and it's my understanding that he is going to do the same here so that your objection may be premature because we haven't heard what he's going to say yet.
MR. WEINER:  I didn't want to    I'm not trying to make like this is a site plan objection and jumping up and down.
MS. PRICE:  I know.
MR WEINER:  I wanted to let him testify.  So I just wanted to make the point to the Board that we've made all along, to the extent you've heard specific testimony about a specific concept plan, my    our position is that that doesn't help you.  That's not really    it shouldn't really have been taken, but it is what it is.  [If] he wants to comment on it, fine. 
All I'm suggest to the Board is we have to look as this, this is a Master Plan Amendment for property that exceeds the three properties that are    he's going to discuss.
MS. PRICE:  I'm glad that you said that because it does. 
The Board is looking at   
MR. WEINER:  I know.
MS. PRICE:  The Board looked at 32 properties.  And they made a determination to then have its planner draft a proposed amendment. But that doesn't mean that the Board's experts are not under a certain responsibility to respond to testimony that has been received to date.  And then it's up to the Board, Ira   
MR. WEINER:  I agree.
MS. PRICE:     to decide what's relevant and what's not. 
So I think right now we're just    it's premature.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes.
MR. WEINER:  Well, I don't think it's premature.
MS. PRICE:  I understand your objections.
MR. WEINER:  I want to put on the record our position on that. 
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. WEINER:  I appreciate that, and I didn't want to continually interrupt, but I wanted to    our position at the beginning was unless this is a global traffic report that tells you the impacts of the    of the amendment you're considering on, not just an intersection that's near one of them, but on all of the important intersections in town, that it's, in our view, worthless information or basically mostly worthless, that's all.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Fine.  Thank you, Mr. Weiner.
Mr. Jahr, would you proceed, please? 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  I'm going to proceed with my notes to the Board regarding each of the    you've heard from three different traffic engineers.  I'd like to give you all the benefit of my experience based on what they have told you. 
I don't necessarily agree with everything the traffic engineers said, although they were pretty much on target.  I think it's important for the Board to also, after hearing all of that    I think it make sense for you to hear, you know, what my take on each one these projects are.  I'll be brief about it because, as discussed, it's really not the whole crux of the matter.  Really, we're looking at a much bigger piece.  But these specific things are on the table; they were testified to.  So my opinion should be able to help you, guide you a little bit, to filter some of that. 
So without ado, The Dayton.  Okay?  That's a project that was prepared by Langan Engineering.  Their final report was, I believe, November 22nd, 2011.  For the sake of records, these are all in the record already.  Okay?  We reviewed the    obviously, we've been to the site, reviewed the project location; we've reviewed the development.  They're proposing to build 106 residential apartments.  Okay?
Oh, by the way, while I'm going through this, I'd like to just    just put my board up so you guys all could just send it down the row to look at it, and then we could put it up in the front for the public to see. 
The board was prepared to give you guys some comparison.  Okay?  The Dayton is proposing to supply 187 parking stalls, and their traffic    their traffic report indicated that, you know    obviously, the site driveway is going to operate at Level of Service A and B.  But they did note in their report, you know, that in order    the Level of Service at South Broad and Ridgewood is Level of Service F.  And the reason I bring that to your attention is because that's a critical intersection, and it's part of our overall study.  And this development affects that intersection as well as any other one built in town.  So you already have a, you know, a condition that warrants some review. 
The next project is The Enclave; that was    that traffic statement was prepared by Omland Engineering.  I will note that the Board did receive a traffic engineering report from Dolan & Dean Consulting early on in the process, but that was ultimately not relied upon. 
So although I did look at it and it had some useful information    it had a traffic count that no one else had done, and helped me in my overall analysis    I felt the need to note that.  That development is going to consist of removing 14,551 square feet of retail and developing 52 residential units, apartment type. 
Once again, you'll note, from the board that you're circulating around, I noted what the peak hour trip generations were for that.  They have an interesting approach to parking there    as you will note, their engineer gave a significant presentation on how they arrived at their parking.  It was    ultimately    I was a little confused when he went through it, but ultimately, his numbers were accurate.  And it appears as if the parking amount that they intend to supply for that development will fit within, you know, guidelines that have been established by both the ITE and the ULI. 
I will note to the Board that when that hearing took place and we had those comments, I explained that I did not agree with some of the information and that is because, you know, I really    it was new to me, and I had to do significant further analysis of it. 
All said and done, their analysis of parking was accurate.  They proposed to use what they call shared parking.  I think the Board should keep in mind shared parking is a very applicable and widely used concept when you're mixing residential, retail, and other establishments. 
So while you're reviewing the parking part of this, I suggest that you continue to keep in mind, you know, the other land uses nearby and, you know, how, you know, that shared parking concept may come in handy in your review. 
They also did capacity analysis and Level of Service analysis.  Their analysis were accurate taking into account all of the developments; their report was done the last.  So their report actually had taken into account the traffic and trip generation from all of the other proposed developments, including the one which has now been abandoned at the Ken Smith site.  So their report was a good barometer for me in my overall analysis to see, you know, how the traffic is going to increase in the Village overall. 
Chestnut Village is the next one on my list and the third development.  They are proposed to be, again 46 one and two bedroom apartments and six townhouses; pretty much the exact same size as The Enclave residential. 
So you'll notice, if you'll look at the trip generation comparison, The Enclave and The Chestnut Village are very, very similar and have, you know, very minor differences.  The reason for the minor difference, you'll see on the board there, is because The Chestnut Village has six townhouses, which has a slightly different trip generation than regular apartments.  They are proposing to provide 76 parking stalls at their development.  And, once again, they did a Level of Service analysis that was not very useful insofar as, you know, basically said that Levels of Service are A and B at the driveways.  The other analysis they did isn't really useful to us because it doesn't take into account all the different developments that I need to take into account for my analysis. 
I'd like to point out that also I reviewed the traffic evaluation for Ridgewood Station at 15 Franklin Avenue that had useful information for us to use in our review. 
I reviewed the Village of Ridgewood parking study; it was a little dated, prepared by Rich Associates, May 2002.  It was a rather lengthy report, but it had some good information on, you know, what the parking is in the Village.  We all    we all know parking is a challenge, and the Village is trying to stay on top of that, and in so doing, they had that study done.
And then there's the Village of Ridgewood Parking and Traffic Studies, prepared by Edward and Kelcey in 1971.  It's also another lengthy document, 118 pages.  Again, not extraordinarily development for where we are right now because it's so dated, but it helps me to establish a historical background for where the traffic was then and what's happened between then and now.  Okay? 
That would be my presentation with regard to the individual reports presented by the developers. 
If you'd like me to pause for a moment, I think if the Board has any questions, or with regard to just that section of it, would you like me to pause or should I keep going.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Why don't you proceed? 
Are there questions from the Board at this point?
MS. PETERS:  Can I just repeat, just that I know that you're looking at the data the developers gave you, but I believe you said that the 2002 Village report you have examined as well as the 1999 Edwards and Kelcey report, you also examined in relation to what has been presented to us? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PETERS:  Was there any other document; I may have missed it?
MR. JAHR:  Well, the only other document I'm about to discuss has been given to the Board some time ago, and that is written to the Chairman by Bernadette Walsh, chairwoman of the Citizens Safety Advisory Committee.
MS. PETERS:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  In February 5th, 2013, Bernadette had provided the Board with this letter.  This is, you know, also some clues on things that I needed to look at.  Do you have that?  Or I    it's a very brief letter; I could read it to the Board real quickly.  It's    it's pertinent to    to really, my overall case.  Okay?
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Please do. 
MR. JAHR:  "Dear Mr. Nalbantian:  At our January 24, 2013 meeting Citizens Advisory Committee, we formulated our concerns as it pertains to the proposed development of Central Business District.  Our understanding is that there are currently four active development applications before the Planning Board and one application on hold.  It is our opinion that the current pedestrian and traffic conditions are unacceptable.  Our intention to advise the Planning Board of our concerns to ensure adequate improvements to benefit the development to the community would need to far outweigh the detriments. Specifically, we find there are four main concerns: One, all lighted intersections in the CBD are inadequate and outdated.  These conditions are often the catalyst for ongoing safety issues. Updating will ensure modern design and technical capabilities, pedestrian audible left turns.  Our recommendation to the Board is a requirement  from developers as a condition of their approval to update these intersections. Number two, the adoption of a Traffic Improvement District, TID.  A TID is a special funding district for improving transportation infrastructure and services in a specific area.  They provide a forum for achieving cooperation among local governments and other governmental agencies on a common purpose of improving the transportation system in a designated area.  Number three, the Village of Ridgewood is a Complete Streets community and desires that all modes of transportation be considered within the public right of way; this means the pedestrians, cyclists, etcetera. And then number four, the possibility of an increased amount of school aged children walking to and from school during the morning/afternoon hours.  Working with the  Board of Education to provide the safest and most direct routes to schools.  Our committee believes this is a worthwhile discussion that will lead to safer environment for both residents and guests of our believed Village.  Please contact us with any," etcetera, etcetera. 
This is a very important document in this, in that this is from your Citizens Advisory Committee.  These are the people who are living in town who are experiencing the problems, and they gave this to our Board, and the Board gave it to me and said, "John, go look at this.  Go look at these problems.  Look at the traffic lights; please investigate this.  We need to know if we change our zoning, will this have a detrimental impact, you know what impact will this have?"  Okay. So this is an important document.  It does outline, you know, clearly the concerns and also a significant amount of my studying in the Village. 
I'm going to move now to the last part of my discussion about these three specific developments.  Okay?
MS. WONDERGEM:  I just want to interrupt.  There's extra copies on the table here of the report, if anybody want to see them.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Are those the ones there, Jane?  If people need copies, they're right here.  Help yourself.
MR. JAHR:  Okay. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Just don't take the chart.
MR. JAHR:  I'm going to keep speaking if that's okay with everyone?
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you.
MR. JAHR:  Moving forward, I'd like to speak to each of these three developments and how    why I feel it's important, this next part of my analysis. 
The next part of my analysis was briefly touched on by all three developers in their own way.  My evaluation or my look at this is not just for these three sites, but I'd like to use these three sites as a demonstration point for the Board on what could happen, both positive and negative    all right    depending on how you look at this rezoning. 
So what I would like to first do is    I'm going to discuss The Enclave; that would be the third one down on the list. And the reason I point to that one is that site is particularly suitable for a complete demolition and rehab.  You know, obviously the current developer would like to make some changes there and add residential, yet keeping some of his retail and, you know, other businesses. 
However, the    currently, the property is zoned in a certain manner, and should that developer like to, he could come to town tomorrow and he could level the side and come in with an as of right application to put something in the order of a CVS and a restaurant. And I    I think that that's not unreasonable.  I think that we can see something like that in that location.  All right. So what I wanted to do is look at these three projects, from my own point of view of course, and say, "What could possibly    what realistically could go there?"  They all had what they thought could go there, but I'm looking at it from my point of view, more on the Village end, saying, "Okay.  What really makes sense?"  If that were to happen, okay, the    there would be more traffic, all right, which is why I focus on this job, than which is being offered, you know, currently by the development. In small numbers or to keep it simple, okay, there would be a more than 50 percent, in many cases more than a 100 percent increase, in the amount of traffic that would be experienced if instead of putting some residential, they made this change to a retail as of right.  This is of concern to me. My concern is, as your zoning stands right now, it could allow these guys    allow this particular developer to develop their property in a manner which could cause significantly more traffic congestion in an area that we already have it. 
So as a    as a    as a comparative purpose for my own sake, I wanted to look as each one.  So that's an example of a site that I looked at, and what could happen there, and what the end result could be. 
Now, I also looked to find if there was some   
MR. WEINER:  Excuse me; I'm sorry.  I don't have a problem; you could testify about that, but do you have any data?  Did you provide any reports, any back up, or are you just making up a 50 to 100 percent number based upon some   
MR. JAHR:  It's in the charts over there.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  So what    what is it that's 50 or 100 percent?  I just want to understand. 
MR. JAHR:  The amount of traffic.
MR WEINER:  A CVS and a restaurant? 
MR. JAHR:  Right, a CVS and a restaurant.
MR. WEINER:  Oh, okay.  So when you're saying 50 or 100 percent increase for a CVS and a restaurant.
MR. JAHR:  Right.  If they were to level the site   
MR. WEINER:  Right. 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  And put that instead.
MR. WEINER:  Okay.  I just wanted to clarify your testimony.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  Now, the other side is I wanted to look at the site and say, Well, is there anything else that could go there that would create less traffic or generate less traffic?  Okay?
There are things that could go there that are realistic as well, all right, that could generate less traffic. 
But sadly, that is what they're asking for, and that is    would be a residential component.  Residential will generate less than, you know, the commercial in this case. 
There are other sites that we've looked at, which would be the next one we're going to talk about, which is going to be The Chestnut Village, where   
MS. PRICE:  John, can I just stop you for one second?  When you're testifying, you're testifying using the as of right chart that you prepared? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes, we're using the as of right chart established, dated July 11, 2014. 
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  And that chart has various data contained for each of the properties that were initially filed and requested for consideration for the Master Plan Amendment, correct?
MR. JAHR:  Correct.
MS. PRICE:  And your chart includes columns for variance uses with categories of use and then size and then various peak hour traffic   
MR. JAHR:  Correct.
MS. PRICE:     numbers, correct? 
And peak hours traffic numbers, would you opine that that is typical, in terms of your    the area of your expertise, that that's an analysis, that that would be a routine analysis that you would prepare when looking at different uses. 
MR. JAHR:  Yes, it is.
MS. PRICE:  So there's nothing extraordinary, by what you've prepared here, in terms of looking at this? 
MR. JAHR:  No.  This is    this is a very ordinary thing for me to prepare for any board, to give them some basis of comparison from a traffic standpoint. 
The primary numbers that we're looking at are the peak hours numbers, those are the most widely reviewed and they are the highest impact.  So I'm looking at the worst case scenario.  We always want to look at the worst case, so whatever we can to do to fix it, we'll get the most benefit from.
MS. PRICE:  And in terms of the projects    you're using the projects as a point of reference. 
I'd like you to just identify, since the concern is    and we've heard from Mr. Weiner already about his global concern, the Board is looking at this globally in the downtown, so with regard to The Enclave that you've just referred to, and the impact on the roadway system, would that    would the area of traffic, vis a vis the roadway system for that project include the intersection of Ridgewood Avenue and Maple, and then extend north to Franklin and Maple, and include the extension of Franklin across by the realtor's office and the Bank of America. 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.  When I    that's a little later in my testimony.
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  But it's good to hit that right now, and that is, I have looked at the traffic at many more intersections than just what were stated in these developers' traffic reports.  They    I would use their reports and the traffic volume they gave me as the basis so that I could expand and look at other intersections in the Village. 
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  Obviously they've studied the intersections closer to their sites, because that's where they're going to have the biggest impact. 
But my review looks at all of the sites put together and all the traffic, and then looked at not only the intersections by their site and not only their traffic, but the traffic from the other developments as well.
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  So just    when you go through it, maybe you could identify, just for step one as you're going through these individuals, just like we just did with The Enclave, the initial roadway network analysis that you looked at.  And that way we could get the overall    the overall picture of the CBD, and then you could add to it when you get to it in your testimony.
MR. JAHR:  Well, actually, I could go through the entire street network, you know, that encompasses our review as this point.  Okay?
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  And that is    right now, the primary intersections that we're reviewing are:  Maple Avenue and East Ridgewood; Maple Avenue and Franklin; Franklin and Oak; Franklin and Chestnut; South Broad and East Ridgewood; East Ridgewood and Oak; and East Ridgewood and Maple.  Those are the primarily locations.  All right?  And the reason those locations were chosen is because they're primarily the through routes, and will be most impacted by any change in the rezoning of the downtown CBD.  Okay? 
We would, in the future, depending on where this goes, probably look to study some other intersections throughout the Village. 
But, once again, we need to focus on the more critical ones first, and I believe the list I just gave you are what we consider to be most the most critical right now in the Village.  And I'm not sure, but I believe they're also part of what the County has looked at as well. 
So we're trying to focus on the top priorities; I mean, as far as every intersection in the CBD, that's not appropriate at this stage.
MS. PRICE:  And if there were a time when a site plan was actually filed, would those exact intersections at the location of properties, or at or near properties, would that be the appropriate time that that would be analyzed? 
MR. JAHR:  Exactly.  The intersections adjacent to those specific properties are the ones that they studied in their reports, only become truly relevant to us at the time of an actual site plan application. 
For what we're doing here, we're looking to have a more global review, and so where this developer    where a developer did an analysis at an intersection by their project, they may not have taken into account the traffic from all the other projects and then, you know, considered that there's going to be other potential rezoning and other changes in how the downtown is going to operate.  And in my analysis and review, we've looked at, you know, some of those as well.
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  Thanks.  Thank you.  I didn't mean to get you out of order.  I just wanted to get that on the  
MR. JAHR:  That's perfectly fine.
I'm going to move back to the as of right review.  And I would like to point out to the Board, I prepared this, there are a number of different scenarios and options for each of the projects.  You have a hand out for everyone to look at.  You're all welcome to review that and, of course, ask me questions about it later.
But I'm going move from    so for the sake of The Enclave, okay, it appears as if, from my point of view at this particular juncture, the proposal that they're presenting is one that will make traffic less, as opposed to what they can do as of right, or other options they have available.  I was not able, for the The Enclave, to identify anything that would create less traffic than the current proposal. 
Whereas in the case of The Chestnut Village, that's different.  In the case of The Chestnut Village, they actually had a mini storage approved on that site at one time ago.  So in fact, what they're proposing with regard to residential could, from a traffic standpoint, be less because there could be, in fact, mini storage or mini warehouse that the Village at one point found would be acceptable at that location, albeit not very sightly and wouldn't be my favorite thing to put in a CBD, because, bearing in mind The Chestnut Village, albeit a block out of the CBD, it really is in the CBD area.  And it would be a shame to waste that property, you know, on a self storage facility, from my point of view. 
However, it's important for the Board to be able to have the data to know that, in that case, there is a traffic generator that would be less. 
Now, I preface that traffic generator would be less; of course if any of these sites were bought by the Village and converted to a park, that would certainly be less from a traffic standpoint.
So I don't want to, you know, poison my testimony by saying there's nothing.  There's no question that, you know, if the Village ever wanted to go down that route, then there's no question that a park would be much less traffic, and you would not need me here. 
So with regard to Chestnut Village, we did look at other possibilities for them.  And they seem to feel that they can do as of right a general office building or even a medical office building.  I'm not so sure I agree with their opinion as of right; I haven't gotten input from Blais.  He would have to make the final determination on that. However, for the sake of comparison, it's reasonable to think that an office building could go there or a medical office building.  There is one right next door, for the most part. 
So if you compare the trip generation for the residential, compare it to the general office or medical office, once again, the residential is a lower trip generator. 
Without getting into specifics, this is    it's a detailed chart.  I want the Board and the public to be able to look at this and have active comparison on their own basis.  Okay? 
My opinion with regard to The Chestnut Village is residential is probably one of the most likely reasonable candidates to go in that site, and has one of the lowest order of trip generation, albeit there are other uses that could be lower, and there are other more plausible uses that would be higher.  And certainly from an as of right, what they could put there would be higher from a traffic or a trip generation standpoint.  Okay. 
And then I'm going to hit the last    I'm going to talk about The Dayton in a little bit, and then I'm going to do a summation of all this and how it relates to the other potential rezonings in the district.  Okay? 
The last of The Dayton, they're proposing 106 apartments.  They could build    and it's not farfetched to see a Trader Joe or a supermarket type use on that site.  The location is very, very good, you know, the access on that site is pretty good as well, albeit the traffic is very challenged through that area.  That is a significantly higher trip generator than, you know, a residential dwelling.  General office building can also go on that site, which also is significantly higher from a trip generation standpoint.  Okay? 
If you want to look at the specific numbers on the chart, if you need some help discerning them, I think it would take forever from a testimony standpoint.  So I would like to simply just enter the chart into the record and to the Board's satisfaction I'll answer questions afterward. 
Now, I would like to take the next step, and I would like to explain why I did this.  Okay?  I did it for a very different reason than the developers did.  Okay?  The developers did an as of right analysis to prove to the Board and the town that what they're proposing is the best thing and they're going to have less traffic. The reason for my analysis is, is to first of all check to see what they said was right.  And then to take it to the next step further and say, are there other things that could be less, and is there other types of rezoning the Board might want to consider from a traffic standpoint.  Okay?  And then, the next and further step is using these as a litmus for other sites that might be rezoned in the CBD. 
So, you know, right now you have three applications before you as a good barometer of what could potentially be, from a traffic standpoint. 
So I'm using them to help me to analyze what's happening in the CBD and what will happen if not just these properties are rezoned, but what if other properties are rezoned, what if other changes come online. 
And I    I say very, very clearly, if the Board is considering rezoning as shown on the    I do have the multi family housing in or near Central Business District exhibit that was prepared by our Village Planner; I think it's been revised, and I have the most recent one. 
But if we're considering these rezoning zones, there are definitely going to be more than just these three properties or four or five.  And as I can from    say from a traffic standpoint, it appears that in general if the property has already been zoned for either a commercial or a retail use, allowing a residential use to come will be a lower traffic generator. So, therefore, from a traffic standpoint, if you make changes to these properties and they change from the current commercial zoning or retail zoning, to allow a residential zoning, it appears from my analysis that the traffic will be less. 
Now, the other part of that is the Village, of course, will want to look very carefully about if they do allow them to change this zoning, to make certain that the errors of the past are not continued into the future.  And what I mean by that is, in the past, the Village developed; it's been    you are absolutely a victim of your own success.  It is a very    it's a wonderful place to be; it's a great place to live; and it's a great place to come and shop and to eat.  However, in the past, there's been lots of development, and development went on, relatively unchecked with regard to traffic. And this is not just in Ridgewood; this has happened in many of the other towns that I've worked in today.  All right?  And now, we have    we got to where we are now.  There are traffic problems; there are concerns that we need to look at; and we need to make certain that if we allow these changes, we need to make certain that we fix the traffic problems moving forward.  Okay. 
Now, to that end, I have some    wait one second here.  To that end, I have some recommendations for the Board to bear in mind.  One is you have a very vibrant train station.  "Smart Growth" is not just a fancy saying.  Smart Growth is a very important part of what New Jersey is doing everywhere.  All right? 
With me I'm showing the Board a Smart Growth awards book that, you know, I went to and was named in.  And there were five projects in here that fall under Smart Growth. Interestingly enough, some of the projects were multi family projects, all right.  But in every case, they're always by a train station.  You have a very unique and well documented opportunity to manage your growth, to manage your zoning, and make it smart by using your train station and keeping your traffic down, doing everything within your power to    if you do make changes, to move the development in a manner that is not a detriment to the Village.  Every step of the way, we need to check and make certain that we're making the right decisions, and that if there are changes, we have the proper ordinances and rules in place so that everybody gets treated fairly, but we don't just have uncontrolled growth and have out of control traffic generation throughout the Village that would obviously be a big detriment. 
At this point, my analysis and my opinion to the Board is broad based; it's based on looking at some specific developments and how they will affect the downtown, and then taking that analysis and applying it overall, broad based.  If, in fact, you were to make the zoning changes broad based, you actually have the potential of improving the traffic levels of service at some of your intersections. 
Some of my preliminary analysis, all right, that I set up    I set up    we're not at the stage yet where I could introduce this kind of data to the Board, other than in testimony and in my experience. 
And some of my preliminary analysis, I entered some of our data into what we call the Synchro model, and the same model that I used in that Montvale project, okay, for Wegmans.  It's very, very sophisticated software that gives me a snapshot of what will happen if I get all the traffic lights to work together, if I get    if things start to work more homogeneously within our traffic system here.  And what that tells me that, if we change the zoning and we create new land uses that are a lower traffic generator, the long term effect on the Village will be better levels of service at some of your critical intersections. 
Now, that doesn't mean to say every intersection gets better, because it depends on where the development goes, where the change goes.  But the critical ones that I'm looking at, those ones on Franklin and Maple and East Ridgewood, these are    these are very important intersections.  Everybody drives through them all the time.  Okay?  They actually could get better if you manage your traffic and you create a system or a process by which, if development comes    you know, every developer, you know, mitigates their traffic.  All the developers' traffic engineers came here and not one said, "We have no impact on traffic."  They're all going to add some amount of traffic.  Okay?  Albeit they could add a lot more. 
So my concern to protect you is to have you bear in mind that, you know, it could    you know, depending on how you approach this and how you evaluate this; you know, there could be a traffic detriment. So allowing things to be the way they are, it could actually be worse, and changing it in a manner that is not properly monitored and doesn't protect the Village, it could also be a detriment.
So it has to be well thought through, and you have to be, you know, be on task for this so that we don't have those mistakes made since that 1971 report that I reviewed, where the traffic volumes of Ridgewood were then very, very busy, but you didn't have every intersection having, you know, reporting Level of Service of E and F. Now, every one of the intersections that I studied today have at least one movement or one approach in one peak hour that has either an "E" or "F" condition.  In the 1971 report, you already had signs of that because you had "D"s and "E"s; you had a few intersections that were showing Level of Service F.  Slightly different analysis method; I really think in the '71 report, these really would have been "E"s in today's analysis. 
So    you know, you have some basis, we have some history.  We have a good guide to go by.
MS. PRICE:  John, can I just stop you for a second?  When you talk about "E" and "F", that's on a scale of "A" through "F", correct? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  Like a school scale?
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, I'm sorry; I haven't    because we've had so much traffic, I haven't   
MS. PRICE:  That's okay.  I just want to ask you a couple of quick questions.
MR. JAHR:  Fire away.
MS. PRICE:  And I'm not going to hold you to it, but could you give us a general understanding of what the level of delay is for a Level of Service E or "F"?
MR. JAHR:  Level of Service E is more than a 60 second delay.
MS. PRICE:  Okay. 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  That is at the point of most drivers being really uncomfortable.  "F" is pretty much anything over 61. 
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  So at "E", we find it to be extraordinarily unpleasant to go to that intersection.
MS. PRICE:  So the intersections that you referenced that you studied beyond the intersections immediately at or abutting the three properties that are the particular proponents of the Master Plan Amendment, did I just hear you say that at least one movement at those intersections   
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:     are either "E" or "F". 
MR. JAHR:  At every single intersection that I entered into my model, I reported a Level of Service E or "F" at least on one movement.  That doesn't mean the whole intersection was failing. 
MS. PRICE:  Correct.  There are various movements at each intersection.
MR. JAHR:  Right. What that tells us is that there are pressure points.  There are places in town where, for example, you know, in the morning everybody travels, you know, north on Maple.  Okay?  So we see, you know, in the morning particular movements that are very troubled on Maple, you know.  This tells us what we need to fix, though.  Okay.  So by me, by focusing on those movements, I know what needs to get done in the future. 
MS. PRICE:  Well, on that point, if the Board were to approve a Master Plan Amendment, and the Council were to do a zone change at the time of any site plan change, would that be a time when a distribution study would perhaps be analyzed in terms of determining exactly those patterns of traffic, to determine East, West, South    East, West, South, North patterns in terms of where the improvements are necessary?  I can't remember the four patterns of traffic.  That's really good.  Tuesday night; not a good sign. 
MR. JAHR:  Absolutely.  You're dead on target with that.  And I guess that kind of leads us    I'm going to go slightly out of order from the outline a little bit.  I'm going to jump from that to    I'm going to actually close up the traffic presentation with the T.I.D. I'm going to    I'm going to go back into parking and school   
MS. PRICE:  Well, wait, before you go there, I want to take you someplace else because I have a couple of questions. 
During work session, you provided the Board and the public who were in attendance with some potential recommendations that you saw, as the traffic engineer could be implemented at various points in time to improve traffic conditions in the CBD and that those improvements could go hand in hand with developments such as the ones being proposed.
And it's my recollection that those improvements included:  Traffic signal installations; signal timing improvements; gap analysis to ensure that the gap timing between existing lights and newly installed lights were coordinated; ADA ramps and curbing; larger sidewalks; designated pedestrian crosswalks where there aren't any; pedestrians countdown markers; and other types of traffic techniques and improvements.
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  Is it still your testimony that things such as that could be done and would be a reasonable solution or means of assistance to improving the traffic situation in the CBD? 
MR. JAHR:  Absolutely. In addition to a good look at the zoning and the land uses, improvements to the downtown specifically the signalized intersections, would have a significant quality of life impact on the residents of Ridgewood. All of your signals are very, very old.  And I didn't    I investigated all the ones within our study area in the CBD.  However, this is a moving target now because your Township/Village Engineer has been hard at work, and he's been working with Bergen County.  And it appears if as if he may be in the point of getting them to help and invest a significant amount of resource into the Village and improve a number of these locations.  That would be absolutely great, if you couple that with a clear traffic plan and a T.I.D., that would make the necessary allotment so that if any development comes in, regardless, you'd be able to create a traffic fund, and whatever the County and the Village isn't able to fix, and this hopefully next round that's going to come soon, it could be part of the improvement that would come onboard as any development were to take place.
MS. PRICE:  And the T.I.D. that you're referencing, the Traffic Improvement District that we've heard of also during work session, and that would be something that the governing body would consider that the Planning Board would get back on a referral basis, but that the governing body would consider, correct? 
MR. JAHR:  Right.  In this case, it would be the Planning Board after hearing about this quite a bit from me, would make a referral to the Town Council, and then the Council would invite me in to explain to them how it works and, you know, let them have their own say with regard to it.  That would be    as I said, this is now as far as where improvements are going to happen, may not be where any of the developers thought they were going to be in the first place because, you know, where in one case we had identified the pressure point, for example, Franklin and Oak as one that would be reasonably located and a developer could fix as part of, you know, them coming to develop it, that may be part of the county project now. So, in fact, it would be much better to say move any resources we were to get in the form of a T.I.D. contribution into a different location in town, completely at the Village Engineer's discretion, which is the best way to manage your T.I.D. fund, that fund is your Village Engineer; you know, he knows by the complaints because he's interacting with the police; he's interacting with the public; he's interacting with all your boards:  Zoning, Planning and Council.  He knows where the bad spots are.  And that's where we want to put our resources.  We want to fix those first.  It's all about quality of life.
MS. PRICE:  And that would all be coordinated outside of this Master Plan Amendment?
MR. JAHR:  That's all outside this Master Plan Amendment.  It's only a recommendation from this Board.
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  Thank you.
MR. JAHR:  So    okay.  So we discussed where we are now in the planning stage, and we discussed that later we have two    two paths, you know, one is the more specific site plan for these applicants, and the other is the traffic mitigation procedures that we would establish on a more broader scale, you know, with regard to the Village and, you know, possibly a T.I.D.
I would like to give some commentary to the Board with regard to the different developments and their parking.  The Village Planner and I have discussed parking at great length; I think that ultimately we will probably give a recommendation to the Board. I would like you to once again bear in mind there were lot of different things that have been presented with regard to parking.  There has been a lot of discussion on RSIS; the Residential Site Improvement Standards handbook is kind of a very good general guide.  I don't find it to be the best for every specific instance. In this case, I'm not sure it is a good guide for us to hold for our CBD, insofar as once you put a train station or mass transit into the mix, pretty much the whole RSIS parking standards go out the window.  They're really not very well suited to a specific situation like Ridgewood.  However, it's a good guide.  It gives us some baselines; it gives us some discussion points. I will point out that it has always been my opinion and it's shared by many others that if you don't have a place to park your car, then you're not going to drive it there. 
So I would caution you, when looking at the different parking available for residential specifically, not for other uses but for residential.  Bear in mind if you provide lots of parking spaces, you're going to    that does lend itself to, you know, one  and two bedroom apartments having more than one car. In many cases, we see    I'm working on a project right now where we see that, you know, for one  and two bedroom apartments, we're having one vehicle for each apartment for, you know, highly well known developers, and it's working just fine.  All right?  Mostly we see, especially by the trains    these are only by train stations, we see that two bedroom apartments tend to be one couple with    and the second bedroom turned into an office.
This is, I think, it also has to do with the price point and other things.  The reason I mention this is specifically about the parking element, and that is   
MR. WEINER:  I have to object.  I'm sorry. This kind of testimony that somewhere else we're doing something and it's working okay, without a whole set of detail, it's not very helpful, honestly. 
MR. JAHR:  I will.
MR. WEINER:  If you're going to say:  It's working great over here; well, that's great is it going to work well over here, bring it over here and do the same thing over here and it's a disaster.  So unless you want to talk about what it is and get into detail about those projects to try to    if you want to use that to establish that this will work, okay, then fine.  But this vague idea that it's working great over here, and everybody turns a second bedroom into an office, really?  That's just a    that's not expert testimony; that's speculation. 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  Let me rephrase.  Let me rephrase.
When looking at the parking, please consider other options and other ideas.  Okay?  Some of which have been stated and some have not.  Okay? We spoke about    I spike about RSIS.  I feel that less parking could lend itself to less traffic.  You can decide for yourself how that gets implemented.  I like very much in situations like Ridgewood, the Zipcar concept where we find that one Zipcar takes the place of ten parking spaces. On a specific development that I worked on in Red Bank for the Red Bank Planning Board, they have significant parking in their downtown as well    significant issues with their parking in downtown as well.  And there's a residential complex there where they implemented the Zipcar system and had tremendously successful results. I think that in any of the developments in the vicinity of a train station, it's something definitely that you might want to consider; it could be part of your overall view of this. One Zipcar taking ten parking spaces means probably ten less trips at one of those traffic lights that isn't working so well. 
Obviously we have the mass transit element, you know, we have bus and obviously the train element; that affects the amount of parking you need and the amount of trip generation. 
Once again, all the trip generation that I did does not take into account that you have a train station here.  It's straight ITE numbers and, you know, out in the middle of any place, so it's    so my analysis tends to be pretty conservative with regard to the traffic part of it.  It just has to be.  But because it's very, very difficult to say how much traffic or not traffic you're going to have, just because you have a train station.  That does cut both ways. 
So that's my commentary with regard to parking.  I think there's a lot to be considered with that.  I believe that probably the Village Planner and I will ultimately, through his report or some further written report from me, make a recommendation to you on how much parking should be considered, you know, for this type of use, you know, or for the various uses that will be proposed in the CBD.
Last, but not least, is a brief discussion about schools.  I prepared a memorandum to the Board dated July 15th entitled:  "Ridgewood Village School Route Evaluation."  When we had a meeting; it was a very long time ago, probably a hundred of the public had come out for that meeting.  I would believe    I believe almost everyone had a concern about either traffic, parking or schools. One of the things that was mentioned a number of times was if there's going to be more residential in the CBD or in that area; you know, what's going to happen with our children, can they get to and from school.  So    you know, it didn't take a long time for me to go and do this.  I thought it was a worthwhile evaluation to go for a walk and, using the developments that were proposed at this time    once again, they're a litmus tests.  If you review this memorandum, you will see the route which is proposed. 
The schools which were chosen for each development were obtained from the school board; we spoke with the school, and they provided us with the "if I lived at this location, how would I get to elementary school", or "which elementary school would I go to if I lived at this location", "which middle school would I go to," and "if I lived in this location, what high school    there's obviously only one high school so that was an easy one.  And so that information was obtained that way. Quite simply, it appears as if there were to be additional residential development in the downtown, there are some areas that sidewalks could be improved, actually, there's    every area where I think the signals need to be improved, which I think is a very important thing to consider, that your signals are antiquated and, you know, if you're going to have children using them to cross, you know, that they need to be moved to the higher part of the list. Right now, some of the signals that are on the lower part of our evaluation might need to get moved up with regard to, you know, considering that children getting to and from school.  Once again, that would be something the Village Engineer would more specifically determine as far as how to hierarchic these things. 
MS. PRICE:  And, Mr. Jahr, all of these issues would again be issues addressed at the time of site plan, correct? 
MR. JAHR:  Right. All of those are really specific to site plan.  And with regard to the school route evaluation, it's again more of a global; you know, can they get there from there?  If we put more housing downtown in the CBD, will the children have an adequate, safe route to get to school? 
The answer, based on my review, is yes, there will be an adequate, safe route.  The other part of the answer is, yes, I do feel that improvements, you know, should be done, you know, moving forward if these changes are to take place.
MS. PRICE:  And just to complete the record on the school issue, you're not providing testimony on any other issue relative to schools, other than the routes that are contained in your report, correct?  No further testimony such as, I just want to be very clear for the record, you're not providing any testimony concerning capacity of schools or any other related issues?
MR. JAHR:  Absolutely not. 
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  My only review for the school would be can we get to it by walking, and of course the other part is, is the traffic part.  And once again, I think that    that with regard to any traffic impact at the school    I think that's a greater issue.  I think that, once again, that you would have to be looked at, at a later day.  I don't think it's the time for looking at that now.
MS. PRICE:  Okay. 
MR. JAHR:  So that pretty much brings us to the end of my traffic presentation with regard to answering any questions.  I would like to just add one brief thing, okay, and that is the most important thing I can do for the Village of Ridgewood is to somehow help to guide you so that you can improve in any way your quality of life through better traffic management, to give you the guidance and advice necessary so that should you make changes, should you move forward in any of these matters, that we don't go in any direction that would be detrimental to the Village. My goal is clear and simple:  If you make changes to your zoning and your land use, you're going to affect many things, traffic being one of them.  I would like to    hopefully, the information I have given you will help to guide you in a manner so that we go in the right direction and improve quality of life, not make it worse at any location. 
I'd like to point out that there have been significant studies, and the Village has made so many positive steps towards making better quality of life when it comes to traffic by adopting Complete Streets, by doing the studies in '71, by doing your parking study.  You already get it.  You know you have to stay on top of this stuff.  All right.  Clearly, you're vetting this out now.  You're vetting it with these developers that came in; you brought me on board to help to bring some commentary with regard to where this all could go.
Summation, very simply, depending on the land use, depending on how you make the changes here to the CBD, it appears to me as if multi family compared to an as of right will be a lesser traffic generator and, thereby, could potentially improve the traffic impact in the Village, if managed properly, it may not    that's not a blanket statement, that means you have to do all those things.  You have to manage it.  You have to make sure that we don't just add new developments without having each development improve some kind of    you know, they're bringing in some traffic    it's just like if you have a sewer pipe and the pipe's only 4 inches and they bring more people in, then you need 6 inches.  The same thing is on the road; if the road only has two lanes and you put more cars on it, we need to add more lanes and if it's as a direct result of this zoning change or this particular developer, then they need to specifically, you know, make those improvements and fix those problems.  We can't continue to maintain    fixing things after other people come in and break them.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, John.  Thank you very much. 
It's about twenty after nine; what we're going to do is take a five minute break and resume with the same order as we've followed in the past, and that is we would like to open to public questions for Mr. Jahr. So if you have questions specifically with regard to his testimony this evening, give you an opportunity to ask those questions.  After the public has had that opportunity, we'll allow the Board at that point to further their questioning of Mr. Jahr, then followed by other Counsel who is here this evening.
Before we take the break, can I get a quick show of hands of members of the public who would be interested in asking Mr. Jahr questions with regard to his testimony tonight? At least one.  Okay.  Great.  Okay.  Why don't we take a five minute break.  It's    it's 9:24.  Let's start shortly after 9:30. 
(Whereupon, a brief recess is taken.)
(Whereupon, "Trip Generations for Ridgewood Multi Family Housing Redevelopment" Display Board is received and marked as Exhibit B 8 for Identification.)
(Whereupon, Basic Outline of each Individual Applications with Commentary, July 15, 2014, is received and marked as Exhibit B 9 for Identification.)
(Whereupon, Letter Report of Maser Consulting for The Dayton, July 15, 2014 is received and marked as Exhibit B 10 for  Identification.)
(Whereupon, Letter Report of Maser for Chestnut Village, July 15, 2014 is received and marked as Exhibit B 11 for  Identification.)
(Whereupon, Letter Report of Maser for The Enclave, July 15, 2014 is received and marked as Exhibit B 12 for Identification.)
(Whereupon, Maser Consulting School Route Evaluation, July 15, 2014 is received and marked as Exhibit B 13 for Identification.)
(Whereupon, Maser Consulting  As Of Right Analysis is received and marked as Exhibit B 14 for Identification.)
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to begin again.
Okay.  Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to resume. 
Jane, will you do roll call please?
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mayor Aronsohn? 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Bigos?
MS. BIGOS:  Here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Knudsen? 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Nalbantian? 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Peters? 
MS. PETERS:  Here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Thurston?
MR. THURSTON:  Here.  
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Altano?
MS. ALTANO:  Here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Abdalla? 
MR. ABDALLA:  Here. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Jane.
Before we open the hearing to the public for questioning, again, I'm going to reiterate we're going to hear questions from the public.  Again, this is the time where members of the public can ask questions of Mr. Jahr with regard to his testimony this evening, specifically with regard to his testimony this evening. And then we'll come back and allow the Board to follow up with their questions and discussions, and then Counsel. 
So is there a motion to open to public questions. 
MR. JAHR:  Prior to opening    is this on?  Working?  Okay.
Prior to opening to the public, I'd like to put one item on the record.  There was a typographical error on page 10 of 11 of my report for The Dayton Apartments Project. In the second sentence, the number should be:  "The applicant is to provide 1.75 stalls per dwelling" in order to    I'd like to make the record clear on that.
MS. PRICE:  John, what document are you referring to again? 
MR. JAHR:  I'm referring to the July 15th   
MS. PRICE:  They're all dated July 15th.
MR. JAHR:     [2014 Traffic Letter Report for the Dayton Apartments. I'm referring to page 10 of 11, the last paragraph, second sentence.  The number should not be 1.56; it should be 1.75.]
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  Laura will make that note in the transcript as well.  Okay.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Great.
Is there a motion to open to public please? 
MS. PETERS:  Motion.
MS. BIGOS:  I make the motion. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Second.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Thank you.  Nancy you moved and Susan you seconded.  Okay.  Great.
MS. PRICE:  Roll call?
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Roll call please, Jane. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mayor Aronsohn?
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Here   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  No, yes.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Yes.  Whatever. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Bigos?
MS. BIGOS:  Yes.  
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Knudsen?
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Yes.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Nalbantian? 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Peters?
MS. PETERS:  Yes.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Thurston? 
MR. THURSTON:  Yes. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Altano?
MS. ALTANO:  Yes.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Abdalla? 
MR. ABDALLA:  Yes.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Jane.
Okay.  Members of the public who have questions for Mr. Jahr, please come forward.  One at a time, please state your name, spell your name, provide your address. 
Typically we request that you ask three questions, if you have three questions together, and allow Mr. Jahr to answer them one at a time after he has heard the three questions.
MS. IRWIN:  Okay.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  And We'll allow any others to come forward, and then you can come back again if you have more questions than the three. 
MS. IRWIN:  Okay.  My name is Jodi Irwin; you need my address? 
THE COURT REPORTER:  Yes.
MS. IRWIN:  340 Godwin Ave.
THE COURT REPORTER:  Spell your last name, please? 
MS. IRWIN:  I R W I N. 
So my question was just about the parking.  I don't want to sum up for you, but I think you said two of the proposed developments had adequate parking you thought, and one didn't.  And I think you made that assessment based on the Residential Site Improvement Standards and then the town ordinances. 
And I guess I was just curious about what the Residential Site Improvement Standards are, and whether they're relevant to our town, and whether there's other standards. I just feel like we have a town where I don't know anyone that doesn't have two cars.  And I    I can't imagine, maybe in some towns that would work; I just think that the kind of population that we have, you know, a lot of dual income earners, kind of much more of a Yuppie town maybe than other towns.  I don't    I'm just wondering what we're comparing ourselves to, and I don't know if you could comment on that. And then I thought I heard you say less parking equals less traffic.  And I    I don't    to me, less parking is more traffic because people will be parking on the roads and I    my view is, I think people will have two cars, and if there's only a number of stalls, they'll go to the road and they'll find some place.  So I just thought    I would be interested to hear what you thought; you know, what these standards are, and are there other standards we could possibly look to? 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Ms. Irwin. 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  First thing is, is with regard to the specific developments, and that is you may have misunderstood.  I believe all the developments as proposed would provide enough parking. 
I didn't    what it is, I had a very difficult time going through The Enclave parking because it was rather complicated.  So I wasn't convinced at that point, but I'm further convinced that there is enough parking.
MS. IRWIN:  So I thought I heard you say that the proposed parking supply for The Enclave did not meet the RSIS requirements? 
MR. JAHR:  That is correct.
MS. IRWIN:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  It never will because RSIS don't apply to mixed use, it doesn't have    it doesn't have the    RSIS only applies to residential use.  So any time you have anything that is not that, the RSIS standard really doesn't    is not applicable. But once again, I think it's a good guide.  I think it gives us a starting point.
To answer your question, with regard to the parking and what other standards, there are a number of other standards.  ULI, Urban Land Institute, provides some guidance with regard to parking, based on studies that they have done.  And the ITE, Institute of Transportation Engineers, which is the professional society that I'm most closely affiliated with because I actually do studies for them, all right, in cases like this.  Maybe when I'm all done here, I may end up presenting some of this data to them.  All right.  And that is the other standard. The ITE parking generation is really the hands down standard that is nationally accepted.  It's something that we're definitely looking at in Ridgewood because there are some good comparisons there. 
With regard to your comment about less parking, less traffic, what I mean by that is, if    when you're considering a rezoning and you're going to change your land use to one where you can modify how people are going to behave.  For example, if in fact you build a significant amount of apartments and leave very few places for them to park cars and make it so that if they do bring cars to live in that apartment, then    and this is only, again, in the case next to a train station, you're going to force a lifestyle modification on them because if they want to bring a car, they're going to have to pay extra to park it there.  And, you know, if they want to have two cars, then they're going to have even more problems.  Now, does that mean that people won't have cars?  Not in New Jersey; I agree.  I think everybody is going to have a car.  All right. Do I think that we should work hard at trying to get folks that live next to train stations not to have cars?  Yes, I think that's good for all of us.  I think we need to get people out of their cars; I think we need to get them onto bicycles and to walking.  I think the only way you do that is by making it hard to have a car. And one of those other ways of doing that is, you know, like I said, with the Zipcar system. 
I think I've answered all your questions, yes?
MS. IRWIN:  Yes, sir.  So    did you just use, did you use those other standards when you're looking at   
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  You just have to come to the mic because we won't be able to pick up.
MS. IRWIN:  That's it. 
MR. JAHR:  Actually, in my report, you will see that I also evaluated each one of the projects based on those other standards.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, John.
Are there any other questions from the public?
(NO RESPONSE.)
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you.  Okay.  Is there a motion to close to the public?
MS. BIGOS:  Motion to close.
MS. PETERS:  Motion.  Second.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Jane, please call the roll.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mayor Aronsohn?
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Yes. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Bigos?
MS. BIGOS:  Yes.  
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Knudsen?
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Yes.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Nalbantian? 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Peters?
MS. PETERS:  Yes.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Thurston? 
MR. THURSTON:  Yes. 
MS. WONDERGEM:  Ms. Altano?
MS. ALTANO:  Yes.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Mr. Abdalla? 
MR. ABDALLA:  Yes. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Jane.
Okay.  At this time I'd like to encourage questions from the Board for Mr. Jahr.
Why don't we begin at this end, do you have any questions? 
MR. ABDALLA:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.
MS. ALTANO:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Michele? 
MS. PETERS:  My questions and I also am representing Wendy  
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  No.
MS. PETERS:     Dockray and   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Ask your questions, we'll probably have an opportunity for her to come back and ask them. 
MS. PETERS:  Okay.  So she'll be able to address   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes.
MS. PETERS:     on her own?  Okay.  Very good. 
I    rather in keeping with the question that were just asked from the public, is that the    if I am not mistaken, the reports other than what was submitted by the developers were the three that I essentially spoke about, you have it here, that is the traffic evaluation by Neglia Engineering, correct, the Village of Ridgewood? 
MR. JAHR:  Uh huh.
MS. PETERS:  So you had those three other independent reports.  One was a letter of recommendation that was used for your analysis. I am looking for what other empirical evidence was used, what other statistics, where else you went to beside the reports the developers gave as evidence here. 
MR. JAHR:  Oh, the reports that the developers gave were the starting point.  All right? I've been in the Village and have done my own traffic counts and, you know, obtained data from the Village's traffic reports and parking studies, and from the Village Police.  And there is significant other data points I have been able to get throughout the evaluation of this.
MS. PETERS:  I see Mr. Weiner raising his hand, and it's a little bit of a feeling that I have is I would like to know specifically, you know, where the facts come from.  That's just where my question is. 
MR. JAHR:  Which facts?  Every    yeah, I think I need your question to be a little more specific.
MS. PETERS:  The police reports.
MR. JAHR:  The police reports were given to me from the police department.  I requested the most recent three year accident data, and they provided me with police reports for the most    for example, at the intersection of Maple and Franklin, I asked for the most recent three years of accident report at that intersection, and the police department provided those the me.
MS. PETERS:  Thank you.  Thank you.  That's more what I want. 
Thank you very much.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.
MS. PETERS:  When I look at this, which is very hard for me to read the report on all the buildings you were doing an analysis of looking at if we had apartment versus a general office building versus a supermarket.  I know that when we were in subcommittee last year, and I am racking my brain to remember if this was spoken about at one of our other meetings, having to do with the actual parking situation in traffic regarding office buildings versus the residential, and I know your analysis says that we will have better traffic flow and sufficient parking by looking at the residential use.  I remember there was a whole discussion about the fact that when you have office workers that come in once in the morning and, you know, they're there in the business district, they can walk to eateries that are there, and then they leave at approximately 5:00.  And then leaving all this parking available for other uses at that time.  So when I look at this and I see that the office building    and forgive me, I can't read it    52,000 plus square feet of the size of the building that you gave, for instance, for The Dayton, the first example that you gave. What I walk away from this is, is that size based upon if they were to build full to the site as permitted under the current zoning? 
MR. JAHR:  To the    to the best of my ability, to estimate that, yes.
MS. PETERS:  Yes. So what this says to me is that maybe we should be reconsidering the size of the permitted general office building to be.  When we're looking at modifications to the Master Plan, it's just another thought that comes into my mind, that perhaps if that were modified so that a building of that size, would that be more beneficial to Ridgewood to have that modification or not?
MR. JAHR:  Well, from a traffic standpoint, as far as I'm concerned, however smaller you could make it, the better it's going to be.  The less building creates less traffic. But as far as from a land use standpoint, I think Blais would have to give you commentary on that, as far as how much of the land you could use to put stuff on.  That's more a commentary that Blais would provide as the planner.
MS. PETERS:  Right.  All right.  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Michele. 
Mayor? 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Yes, thank you. 
Just two questions, actually following up, I think, on what Michele was asking. So just looking at The Dayton, looking at the first one, 106 units; that's    you looked at that site with 106 units and the parking on the premises.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, sir.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  But when you look at the general office building at 52,000 square feet, you're not thinking of parking on the premises?
MR. JAHR:  Yes, parking is included in that.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  So parking is included.  So all of these would include the parking?
MR. JAHR:  Yes, sir. 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Here okay.
MR. JAHR:  To the best of my ability, estimated.  Now, remember, there's a lot of variables, and things change with office and residential. So I have to use the information that I have. 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Okay.  Thank you. 
And so the other question I have then is with respect to Michele's questions about, sort of, you know, what did you use to come to your conclusions?  And let me just bring up, I guess we talked about The Enclave, the idea of having a restaurant and pharmacy possibility, and it came out to 1284 trips.  What specifically goes into coming up with that number. 
MR. JAHR:  You're looking at The Enclave, and you're looking at the   
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  So I'm trying to look at the numbers you were using before to make your point.  
MR. JAHR:  You're looking at them.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:     proposed residentials is 346.
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  And then you've got the mixed use restaurant and pharmacy; I think you used that example before, 1284?
MR. JAHR:  Okay. 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  I'm just curious, so what goes into coming up with that number, 1284. 
MR. JAHR:  It's    the number is based on the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual.  All these numbers are based on    that have been presented in this chart are based on the   
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  So they have like a set number for pharmacies of a certain size.
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  They have a set number for restaurants? 
MR. JAHR:  Correct.  And that's based on studies that they've done of pharmacies and    and, you know, those uses, and, you know, in those    and not only those uses, but also in that range of square footage. 
So, for example, many times you'll see like a very small medical office generates a lot of traffic, you know, and creates a tremendous amount of parking, whereas as you get larger and larger, the medical office starts to look a lot more like a regular office building as far as the traffic and the parking that it generates.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Right.  And so then related to sort of the question that came from the public before, so when you factor that in and use that formula, are you looking at a town like Ridgewood, in terms of the demographics, as well as the fact that somebody may come into    let's say there was a CVS at that location.  They may not come in just for CVS; they might come in, they might have lunch, they might walk around. So it's not necessarily generating the same amount of traffic as a standalone CVS somewhere.
MR. JAHR:  The ITE numbers that we're using here, we have checked them repeatedly for projects just like this. And consistently, the ITE has been a little more conservative.  So for example, if I am saying it's going to be 1284 and you went and built that here, we probably would find it a little bit closer to 1100.  Okay?  So we    to answer your question is, yes, it appear as if the ITE very, very closely represents land uses in New Jersey.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Okay.  Thank you. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Paul.
Susan?
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  I hope this is    don't know, is it on?  Good.  Thank you.
John, just in terms of The Enclave, for instance, what is it currently zoned today?
MR. JAHR:  Blais?
MR. BRANCHEAU:  The property is split between the B 1 and the B 2 zones today.
CHAIRWOMAN KNUDSEN:  So if today they just chose to develop that property, what would they be permitted to do?  I actually knew that this was the question for Blais. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well, what they    when you say what would they be permitted to do    
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Well, just like you did   
MR. BRANCHEAU:     what use or how big the use? 
CHAIRWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Like retail on the main floor, correct? 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Both zones would allow retail on the ground floor.  The B 2 portion would allow office and some other uses on the ground floor that the B 1 does not allow. 
Both allow a building 45 feet tall.  Both allow housing on the upper floor.  Both allow office and other service type uses on the upper floor.  That's a general description.  I could go into more detail if you want.
CHAIRWOMAN KNUDSEN:  And what would the Village parking requirements be in that zone? 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  They vary.  The B 1 is different than the B 2, largely because of the public parking that's available.  The B 1 requires one parking space for every 300 square feet of non residential floor area.  The B 2 requires one parking space for every 200 square feet of gross floor area. 
CHAIRWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Okay.  All right.  Thank you. 
John, one of my questions is relative to your    the school, the kids taking the walk, the path to school. 
So if I were looking at, for instance, The Dayton, and the children had a particular route to school, and then you made the point before that most people would likely not use two bedrooms; they would likely use one bedroom and turn the other into the office, and perhaps they would only have one car.  What would happen if, in fact, those were children walking to school, because you did that analysis   
MR. JAHR:  Of course.
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:     based the idea that there's a likelihood that children could live there and walk to school.  So you gave them the route. So how would your trip analysis and your parking analysis change if, in fact, all those apartments or 50 percent of the apartments were occupied by two parents in one room and a child in the other? 
MR. JAHR:  All of my analysis was based on the most conservative view.  So I, in no instance, took a credit for any two bedroom apartment being occupied as an office.  In no instance did I take any credit for any less parking for any of those matters.  What I    the reason I brought that information to the Board is for you to consider    all right    in your evaluation that this could happen.  It could    it just as much as, you know, and just, you know, maybe to be fair, we should make sure that the other way it could happen too, you could put two kids in the bedroom, right?  So, you know, it could be both ways. 
My analysis is pure and simple, based on the more conservative approach, not taking any credits for that kind of a case.  So the parking that I presented in my report is based on full occupancy, under standard, normal, ordinary operating procedures, not for any   
CHAIRWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Just for parking.
MR. JAHR:  Not for any    right, for parking, and the same thing for traffic.  We expect that, you know, the traffic analysis    now, the trip generation does not necessarily take into account    it's a more generalized number for one  and two bedroom apartments.  Okay? So my trip generation is the national standard for a 52 unit apartment complex and that's whether    whether the mix    the mix of one and two bedrooms, in this case, it falls within the range of what falls within those studies.  So my trip generation is not affected one way or the other by, you know, a variation in what happens with those one  and two bedroom apartments. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Okay.  So when    if you were looking at a worst case scenario how would you    
MR. JAHR:  Uh huh.
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:     if you were going to add a percentage up, a percentage down in other to allow for a best case/worst case scenario, there's no formula out there that allows you to do that.  Is that   
MR. JAHR:  Well, see, the way that the traffic engineers have to operate is we really have to give you what we think is the worst case because no one is ever going to get mad at me for saying that you need a left turn lane, and down the road apiece, you don't need it.  Like, geez, no one ever goes in that left turn lane. But if I don't tell you you need a left turn lane, and everybody backs up to make a left turn, everybody's going to be pretty upset with me. So we tend to be very conservative in our analysis.  The trip generation manuals that we use, you know, like I indicated earlier we find is always more conservative than what we actually observe in New Jersey. So I would say very confidently that the analysis that I presented is probably on the conservative    is definitely more conservative, and anything we would do would probably lend itself to looking at a lesser impact than what I projected.
CHAIRWOMAN KNUDSEN:  Okay.  Next time make these a little bigger, I cannot   
MR. JAHR:  You're the only person to mention that.
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  I am struggling with this.
MR. JAHR:  You are the only person to mention that.
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  It's really inhibiting my ability to focus on that.
MR. JAHR:  I was nice enough to make mine bigger.
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  How thoughtful for you to do that for yourself.  Okay. 
Go ahead, Nancy.
MS. BIGOS:  Thank you. 
Thank you, Mr. Jahr.  Two quick thoughts, in studying this Master Plan Amendment and the traffic problems throughout the Central Business District, I seem to observe that the traffic flow worsens as we come away from the Central Business District, primarily around the intersections of Linwood Avenue and North Van Dien; Paramus Road and Linwood Avenue; East Ridgewood Avenue and Paramus Road; Lincoln Avenue and Godwin; West Ridgewood and North Maple.  Have you studied the traffic flow as it goes away from the CBD and then back into town?  And does any of this affect those intersections? 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  I am going to break your question down a little bit.  Okay? 
First of all, I have not studied intersections out past Maple.  I have gone down Chestnut all the way to Douglas.  I have gone    actually, you know, a bit past East Ridgewood, and I have looked at some other locations past East Ridgewood, but I confined my immediate study right now to the area, the most    the core of the redevelopment area.  Okay? In the future, we would probably look at things further out, okay.  But where we stand right now, I have not gone to those locations further out.  So to answer your first question.  Okay. 
I believe the next part of your question was do I notice that as you go further out, it appears as if the traffic is actually more congested or more troublesome.  Yes, I have observed that.  And I can explain to you why.  What it is, is the traffic within your CBD is what we called constrained; in other words, only so much can get through.  All right? So what happens is at these outlying locations on Maple, on Franklin, on East Ridgewood, they create what we would have as pressure points or congestion zone areas.  So you would have    for example, the intersection of Franklin and Maple is one of those pressure points, and just so much traffic can get through there.  So when you get further down Franklin, heading more into the CBD, you might notice that it appears or feels to be a little bit less or not as congested as maybe as it is over at Maple and Franklin.  All right?  And that is because the traffic just    it just can't get through. If Franklin worked better and got the traffic to process better, at Franklin and Maple, then you might find that the next problem is going to be Oak, which actually we find that will be the next problem.  Okay? 
So I hope that that answers your questions with regard to, you know, what we're looking at, and agreeing with you, yes, that we do    I agree with you that I see those pressure points are out    right now, I'm studying these pressure points.  There are other pressure points that we may have to look at.
MS. BIGOS:  But I guess, is it fair to assume then, that the outer pressure points will also become more troublesome   
MR. JAHR:  It all depends on.
MS. BIGOS:     with added intensity? 
MR. JAHR:  It all depends on how you change your land use. 
MS. BIGOS:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  If you change your land use to a use that will generate less traffic, then they will become less troublesome.
MS. BIGOS:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  You know, that's    I guess that's the simple answer.
MS. BIGOS:  That makes sense.  Thank you. 
My other thought is that through the Citizens Safety Advisory Committee, I know that that committee studies safety, pedestrian and traffic primarily, you know, addressing the needs of our community. 
What    there were four items listed from that correspondence from ex Councilwoman Walsh, and you touched on three. 
The one that you did not address was the Complete Streets philosophy.  Can you just highlight that a little bit, tell me what that's about?  And if there's any effect, again, with the consideration of the Master Plan Amendment to that concept. 
MR. JAHR:  Well, you make a very good point, and that is Complete Streets is taking the emphasis off vehicular traffic and putting it on pedestrians and bicycles.  Okay? So in this case, your Complete Streets Ordinance would be bolstered or enhanced by you considering more pedestrian and bicycle friendly land uses. So, for example, if you were to consider multi family housing, which is what is before you now that lends itself to a more bicycle    it's a more bicycle and pedestrian land use.  People who live in apartments and housing, they're going to have bikes and they're going to, you know, want to    if you're by a train station, they're going to want to walk.  All right. Whereas, for example, if we would say we were going to do a retail, okay, it is less likely that, you know, we're    that retail is going to generate    you know, there's certainly people walking to it.  Ridgewood does have some bicyclists; you know, I'm sure you see them ride into town, you know, from time to time.  I've seen people riding bicycles, which is a very healthy and wonderful thing.  Okay. So this is part of your consideration, you know, without a doubt, the idea of Complete Streets is let's get people out of their cars and walking on the streets, so let's widen our sidewalks.  In the individual reports, that is one of the recommendations that, you know, we consider places we find where we can widen sidewalks and make it more pedestrian  and bicycle friendly.
MS. BIGOS:  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Nancy.  
MR. THURSTON:  I just have one question, John, and that's about the fair share calculations that you discussed a little bit and the traffic. In your experience, is it typical when somebody does something as of right or in a Master Plan change or in a site plan, that they're the same equivalency in the fair share calculations, or does one coming as of right not necessarily have to be involved in that sort of expense.
MR. JAHR:  Excellent question.  Three answers.  First of all, in the case of the T.I.D., everything's out the window.  You create traffic; you pay a fair share.  All right?  And without a T.I.D., as of right, you have    if you come before the Planning Board, you have no obligation to fix anything traffic.  In the case if you go before the Zoning Board, it's different, though.  If you come before the Zoning Board, then the Zoning Board can impose traffic mitigation upon your development.
MR. THURSTON:  Thank you.    
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, David. 
John, I have a couple of questions, just again for clarification.  There were a couple of comments referencing parking, the use of office or the use of a CVS for parking off hours.  Is that typical? 
In other words, it would seem to me that these other developments would be private property.  Is typical that they're open for the public to use during off hours or are they typically discouraged from being used for that purpose if they're private property, for office space or other retail. 
MR. JAHR:  Actually, there's many questions there, actually. I guess first to answer the question straightforward, if it's private property, they don't    because of insurance and other issues, they don't want to share it with anybody else. So in the case of some of these developments, you know, what we look for is there an opportunity to have the developer potentially give the town some of the property to make it public parking, and then it becomes open to everybody, and it is a benefit to them, in fact still, that they can use that for their retail parking.  And boards will, from time to time, make, you know, agreements with developers where they, you know, provide    this way, the parking becomes the ownership of the Village, and then that insurance issue goes away, and you could make that happen. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you.
Indirectly related to that, again, parking, you touched on the notion of property or development similar to what may be proposed here as being self regulating.  In other words, if there is a limit on parking or a fee attached to it, people who move in understand that, and really don't have any alternative if they choose to stay there, so they'll look at, be it a Zipcar or bicycle or the train. A comment was made by someone this evening that they could park on the street.  Is it true that in Ridgewood that that is really not an option, either?  So the parking issue is a broader issue.  There is a limitation on the amount of parking that's available for all purposes to the public, and that's really    if there is a limitation for residential development, those who live there really don't have options, but to abide by whatever that restriction might be. 
MR. JAHR:  That is correct.  I agree with you.  I think that, once again, Ridgewood is uniquely suited to force some behavioral modifications on people that might want to come to live here.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  In your experience, has that worked in other towns similar to Ridgewood, where those similar restrictions exist?     
MR. JAHR:  Absolutely, to my surprise    I guess the reason I say that with such conviction is that I was absolutely surprised on how that worked.  I didn't expect that to happen. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Switching gears a little bit, you talked briefly about the pedestrian route that children would take from each of these locations to their respective schools.  Especially for grammar schools, in Ridgewood parents, even though it's within a walking distance, choose to drive their children to school.  And in certain situations, the congestion at those schools is rather significant.  Ridge School is one example. 
MR. JAHR:  I've been to the Orchard School and done significant observations there.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Did your analysis include consideration of any increased traffic as a result of parents, during the beginning and end of school hours, driving their children to school?  Are the numbers significant based on your data, and can you elaborate on that? 
MR. JAHR:  I have not specifically evaluated traffic impacts at any of the schools.  However, I would say that it is safe to assume if you increase your population, all right, and I don't know what those numbers are, those aren't things I can't comment on, that there will be an increase of parents driving their children to school. What I would say is that's part of that overall plan of considering a T.I.D., and the overall plan of improving pedestrian access by widening sidewalks and improving the traffic lights. 
So I think that's a two pronged situation; I think.  I cannot give you    there's no study or manual or anything that I could go by that tells me how much traffic will be increased to a school because you add a housing development. I can make some assumptions, and as    if the Village were to go if the route of the T.I.D., we would certainly want to include that in there.  However, I don't have any solid data that I could use, especially at this juncture, in such a broad review.  I really couldn't go there.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Continuing on traffic, is it fair to assume that your comments earlier about as of right suggests that even with the densities that are proposed, that perhaps residential or high density housing, residential development in certain areas or Ridgewood would be more beneficial than    it would be more favorable, traffic wise, than existing possibilities should the properties that we're discussing here, the locations be developed with commercial alternatives to that? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes, based on my analysis, it's   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  So it's an opportunity to explore. 
And the next question that I want to ask is, if your data is based again on the densities that have been proposed, it's not unreasonable to think that anything    any lower densities would also be beneficial, regardless of what kind of development   
MR. JAHR:  Indeed.  Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:     in those locations.  Okay.  Thank you. 
Yes.  Follow up questions.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Yes.
MS. PETERS:  I have a few also.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  I have just a real quick follow up to what Charles was asking about parents driving their kids to school. 
You said you had not done, I guess, had not focused specifically on that, but your assumption would be that there would be increased parent    you know, increased cars going to schools, assuming there were kids in the buildings.  My question is, these numbers that we have for proposed residential weekday a.m. peak hours, is that factored into that? 
MR. JAHR:  The commuter peak in the morning is also affected by people taking children the school.  So the trip generation numbers take into account the fact that some people will leave that driveway and go to a school, and then return again.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Okay.  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
MS. ALTANO:  I have a question.  I have a follow up question. 
You talked about Smart Growth and you also talked about Complete Streets.  I believe those concepts are within the LEED for the neighborhood development process, have you thought about doing a study with the idea that this new development would be developed with that concept in mind, and how would the traffic will be decreased by inclusion of bicycle racks, by having a bus stop nearby, in order to reduce traffic so people don't have to drive to the Park and Ride. 
Have you thought about doing something like that? 
MR. JAHR:  The answer to your question is my analysis is based on the worst case that I can pretty much come up with.  I think, based on my testimony and the guidance I'm trying to give the Board is, is these are elements that at the more specific site plan stage, we need to have these developers incorporate.  We need to have bike racks.  We need to have the necessary sidewalk amenities, street benches.  It's not    it isn't just having a wider sidewalk; it's having the bench for somebody to take a break.  It's having the garbage can to drop the waste in.  It's not just    it's the whole picture.  We need to do the whole quality of life, not just one specific element, and at this stage, no.  The next stage, when we do more specific, that's when we would look at those items.
MS. ALTANO:  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you.  Any other follow up questions from the Board?
(NO RESPONSE.)
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Why don't we move on to our professionals? Is Chris here?  Is he there? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Yes.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Chris, any questions? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Sorry.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No questions at this time, thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Chris?
Blais? 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  John, just a couple big picture questions. 
Would it be a fair characterization to say that, leaving aside the specific number crunching in your July 11th table, that it's your feeling that the traffic being generated by the housing that's proposed here is comparable to the traffic that would be generated by current permitted uses? 
MR. JAHR:  No. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  And why is that? 
MR. JAHR:  I believe that traffic generated from multi family housing would be less than the current permitted uses.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  I see some where it's less at different times; some where it's more.  But overall, it would be within the range of what as of right is today?
MR. JAHR:  No, I don't think so.  I think that    
MR. BRANCHEAU:  You think it's less in every instance?
MR. JAHR:  With the exception    with the exception of The Chestnut Village, I think, in pretty much every case, the net/net would be less traffic generated by some kind of a residential use.
And the only reason I state    the only reason I have to exempt The Chestnut is because at one point they actually did actually apply and were granted an allowance to have a mini storage, so that means that could go there, and that is less. But I don't know for these other sites; that could be the case. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  So    but there are other uses that you didn't include in the table.  And we have a select   
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  We have a selected sample, but I guess I'm trying to    not specifically the uses in that table, but other uses permitted in the zone, you would feel confident in saying that the traffic generated by housing is comparable or less than what as of right zoning would allow today? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.  I compare    because there are some other permitted uses that would be comparable.  So, yes, comparable or less.  Yes, I agree.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Okay, so...
MR. JAHR:  That's a good generalization.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Okay.  Then the takeaway and, you know, and I'll be relying on the traffic testimony in my own report when I provide that for the Board. The takeaway is from that standpoint, what we just discussed    it doesn't matter whether you approve housing or not in that either way the traffic will be comparable.  It might be a little less in some certain circumstances than what could happen.  Is that a fair statement or would you not say that? 
MR. JAHR:  I wouldn't state it that way.  Okay? What I feel    what I feel comfortable saying about the traffic is based on the locations of the properties, the permitted uses of those properties, I feel that if they were to be used within the current zoning, as permitted, that they would generate more traffic than if residential were permitted in those places.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Okay.  Let me then    you didn't do an analysis of how much traffic is being generated, did you? 
MR. JAHR:  No, I did not because it would be    it would be not a very fruitful evaluation because the one site is being used as a commuter lot right now, you know, that's    that's going to produce a bunch of traffic that is not comparable to what we're doing.  So that would skew the numbers.  I don't want it to skew the numbers.  I want to have a realistic representation. I mean right now, The Dayton is    I'm sorry    The Chestnut Village is a vacant piece of property.  So it's    you know, that doesn't    that doesn't give me anything to go by, you know. So everything that we've done here is based on projections and analysis.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  All right.  And I asked the same question of Mr. Pehnke when he testified. 
On The Dayton, for example, you show a supermarket of 52,337 square feet.  That's based upon the maximum floor area permitted in the zone, correct?  45 percent or the lot area?
MR. JAHR:  Yes, what    they weren't really hard numbers for me to figure out.  So what it is, I tried my best to use the FAR and figure out how much parking they'd need and squeeze    it was    it was not a straightforward analysis because all of the properties have some uniqueness to them.  All right?
So in the case of that, yes, I did the best I could.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  All right, because I    you know I look at a supermarket and I say there's no way that a 52,000 square foot supermarket could be developed on the property with the required amount of parking that    because that would be a one story building   
MR. JAHR:  No.
MR. BRANCHEAU:     you have less   
MR. JAHR:  Bearing in mind that all these developments are proposing a deck of parking or parking underneath or some kind of a structured parking.  Okay? 
So I certainly took that into account in my analysis.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  So you think a supermarket would build a parking deck? 
MR. JAHR:  If you're    the way I look at it is, they're willing to build structured parking for residential, there's no question they'll do it for retail.  That's not even    you know if they'll do it for residential, for sure you'd do it for retail.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Even though we've had no parking deck built in the downtown for any grocery store? 
MR. JAHR:  It's not relevant to    that is not relevant to my evaluation. 
What's relevant is what they could do.  They could build a supermarket there with parking, you know, based on the FAR that's allowed.  And that    you know, some of that parking, actually, I don't think we did all the parking that    we just took a percentage and said it's reasonable to assume, based on the amount of parking they're currently putting either in a deck or whatnot.  We assumed a certain amounts would be    it would be also maybe contained in a deck or whatnot.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  All right.  My point of this wasn't to get into the minutiae of the numbers because    you know, whether someone builds a deck or not is    is questionable, but even if it were less, because you're basically maxing out the floor area ratio   
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MR. BRANCHEAU:     of what's permitted but because of the size or the shape of the lot or because the size of the property, you may not make it economically feasible to build a parking deck on it, even if the floor areas were lower than what you show here, which may end up being the case in a number of situations or the uses were different than what you're showing here, would you still be confident in saying that the amount of traffic generated by this type of development is still within the range of what currently could realistically happen?  Not just on a maximum yield situation, but in a lesser yield; it's still within the range of what could happen under current zoning.
MR. JAHR:  You need to define "this development"?  Are you referring to this development?
MR. BRANCHEAU:  The residential projects   
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  I can tell you   
MR. BRANCHEAU:     that overall    and again, I'm not trying to get down to site plan levels, but just in general that the amount of traffic coming from a higher density residential development of what's    of the type proposed here is within the range of the type of traffic that could realistically result from development under current zoning.
MR. JAHR:  No. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  You still feel it's less?
MR. JAHR:  I feel that higher density residential development will have a lower traffic generation than the retail uses. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Right.
MR. JAHR:  I mean, the supermarket is a good example; just    let's just cut it in half.  Let's just say    let's say for conversation's sake, that they only put in a 25,000 square foot supermarket, cut all the trip generation    I mean, even though it doesn't work exactly that way, I need to caution you, but let's just say that it did.  The residential   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  It's 41 in the a.m. peak, versus 38 for residential.  So it's comparable, if it were cut in half. 
MR. JAHR:  If it were cut in half, the a.m. peak hour is 178; half of that is   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  For    I'm sorry.  I'm looking at office building, supermarkets   
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, from an office standpoint, you know, that would    that might    if you cut the office in half, that might be comparable, yeah. But I think if you can get, you know, more than 25,000 square feet of office on that site. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  So the takeaway is, to go back to that, is in considering, you know, at Master Plan, and we need to consider traffic at Master Plan because it's too late at the time of site plan.
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  The Courts have basically said you can't permit a use and then deny the use because it generates traffic.  You should have thought of that when you planned it out. 
So in looking at what uses and what the street system will accept, I think    tell me if you disagree, but what's proposed here would generate traffic that is less than or comparable to what the traffic could realistically be under current zoning? 
MR. JAHR:  I think that if you put multi family housing, it will be less than what   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well, I said less or comparable.
MR. JAHR:  I see.  And I think that in some unique cases, it would be comparable. 
But I think in more cases it would be less than, and I think that the comparable is going to be the lesser case. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  All right.  The only other question I have relates to the improvements.
And you indicated that under the, Municipal Land Use Law an application that comes before the Planning Board cannot be required to impose    cannot have any traffic improvements imposed upon it? 
MR. JAHR:  My understanding is that if an application comes to the Planning Board.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Right.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  That the Planning Board cannot impose a traffic improvement on that applicant because that job is within the plan.  That's part of the plan.  And traffic is not one of the cases that would allow a Planning Board to impose    now they can ask.  The Planning Board can ask for anything.  Okay.  But the applicant does not have to agree to do that. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  So there's nothing in the statute that says we can't assess a pro rata share of the costs of necessary improvements that are made necessary by the development? 
MR. JAHR:  That's a different question. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Okay.  Could you clarify what you meant by that? 
MR. JAHR:  Sure, because that    and the question is, if that is    this is    this is absolutely not really the question for me.  I think at the end of the day; I answered that question to best of my ability; that question goes to the attorney. 
MS. PRICE:  Yes.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well, I think   
MR. JAHR:  And if you're going ask a question regarding what the law is, you know, I'm giving you my experience with planning boards and zoning boards, and how it's been described to me from an attorney.  I am not an attorney, so I could only give you the benefit of my    my knowledge and experience. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  But I was only   
MR. JAHR:     what you're asking is specifically a legal question that   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well, you made a    you made a statement that said we couldn't do that. 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  And that's why I was trying to seek clarification.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  And what is the    my statement was that if an applicant comes to the Planning Board, the Planning Board cannot cause an applicant to have to make traffic improvements. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Even if the improvements are made necessary by that development?
MR. JAHR:  I don't know; maybe they can.  If they can clearly demonstrate that they're causing the traffic impact that wasn't considered in the zoning, and that can be demonstrated, I assume that the Board could certainly, you know, maybe they'll do something.  That's really a question for the lawyer.  I don't know.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  All right.  I have no more questions.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Blais.
Gail, if you want to comment? 
MS. PRICE:  I don't think Gail wants to    Gail doesn't want to comment at this point   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.
MS. PRICE:  But I will comment at the appropriate time. 
But Blais knows the answer; he just wanted to get John's answer.  Right?
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well, no, I think it's relevant in my mind to the whole issue of T.I.D. versus what I understand the law to be, and that is is that you can require the developer to pay a pro rata share of the cost of those improvements made necessary by his development. In other words, if there's additional traffic from a project and it requires, for example, a widening of the road or a signal improvement or something like that, you can't make the developer pay for the whole thing because he's not generating all of the traffic that makes the improvement necessary.  The existing traffic on the road makes it necessary as well as the developer's traffic, but you can make him pay the pro rata share of that cost. 
So if he's generating, let's say 10 percent of the traffic through that intersection, you can make him pay 10 percent of the cost of addressing the impact. So that's a general, you know, my understanding of what the law allows.  And I think it's relevant to the Board's consideration of T.I.D., which deals with traffic impacts and then the costs of those and, more importantly, the spending of those in a different way.
MS. PRICE:  Right. I agree with Blais basically in terms of that, but I think that there are some subcategories that need to be considered, because if you have a permitted use with no variances, whether you could consider off tract    off site traffic to begin with is an issue because if you have an as of right development with no variances, the courts have said   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well, you can't deny the use.
MS. PRICE:     you cannot deny the use.  You cannot deny the site plan because of traffic considerations. 
That being said, you may have county road issues where you have a greater, you know, a greater authority weighing in on improvements that are necessary with a different set of regulations that are involved. So I don't think it's black and white.  But, basically, I agree with what Blais said, that if a project is generating the need for traffic improvements, there's a pro rata share. And in fact, I think, John, DOT is considering determining that making that pro rata share could be 100 percent if there's nobody else involved.  Even though it says pro rata, my understanding is that   
MR. JAHR:  The DOT commonly does that.
MS. PRICE:  Right.
MR. JAHR:  The DOT commonly will    but again, different set of rules; different, you know...
MS. PRICE:  Right, right.
MR. JAHR:  As I said Blais' specific example I agree with, but I also want to point out that it also becomes very challenging, and the burden of the Planning Board to then, you know, assess what that percentage is, and that is not always a simple task. So, hence, you know, I agree with    my generalization is not exactly correct because there are certainly exceptions to it.  But in all    in all cases, if you    the county, the state has their way of dealing with it, and that's their set of regulations, and exactly what you've said, Gail, the county also has theirs, based on    actually, there's some challenges with the County because not all the county charters put them in the position that they get those. But without a doubt, any town that has a T.I.D., it's all spelled out; it's all been figured out; and there's no discussion about it; and this Board doesn't have to figure it.  The Board doesn't have to go to any length to evaluate that.  It's done for you. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  My point in the question really wasn't to disagree with John or to get into the technicalities of the law, but more to, at the Master Plan. Currently, T.I.D. is not part of this Master Plan Amendment.  T.I.D. means Transportation or Traffic Improvement District. It's not currently before the Board.  And it's    in one way it's a separate issue, but I think it's relevant to the consideration in that, if that were to be assumed as a solution as part of any Master Plan Amendment we would need to know what the alternatives are, as far as T.I.D. versus pro rata share, and what we could and couldn't do. 
And the question then becomes, well, let's say pro rata share isn't    doesn't provide enough money to make the improvement, or T.I.D. don't provide enough money to make the improvements, or all the improvements that we need.  What, then? And that goes back to the first question, is, well, if we have the same amount of traffic or more from current zoning, then the proposed is sort of a moot issue in that either way, you have a traffic problem, that    how are you going to deal with it. 
If you get new development, then in one sense, either whether it's pro rata or T.I.D., you do have some money coming in to try to fix that improvement, but the bigger question is do you have enough money to fix the improvement? And I don't know that we really should be getting into that level of detail at the Master Plan level, but I think for me and I    you know, I was trying to get John to confirm this, and I think he did, is that, regardless of how you address the traffic problems, the traffic problems are really no worse than the same under current zoning than they would be under these proposals, and they might actually be better under     is    is full build out development or they would be better, full build out development of certain uses were to occur, versus housing. 
So I'm going to put the whole thing into perspective and not get into the details of the numbers and what intersection and so forth and so on, because I think at the Master Plan level, we do need to take cognizance of what the traffic can consider and what the traffic    what the street traffic can accommodate in a particular project. And I think the takeaway is if there is heavy traffic today, there will be heavy traffic tomorrow, with or without this development. With some development, there's going to be traffic regardless.  And what's proposed the traffic is, in my opinion, is within the range of what could happen if these projects were denied something else would go there, and the traffic could be as bad, could be worse, depending upon what it is, than what is proposed here.  And I think John agrees with me on that.
MR. JAHR:  I do.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  So that was    that was the point of my question.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you. 
Paul, go ahead.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Thank you. 
I still have a question, just going back to the part that we're discussing, John, with Blais a minute ago, it went to a question that I had earlier; I was wondering if, when looking at, for instance, The Dayton and looking at an office building, whether that 52,000 included parking.  And then you guys had this discussion about if it was a supermarket, would the parking use    it maybe deck parking, what have you. 
My question is, and it's probably to Blais is, does our current code require, if a supermarket was built in The Dayton location, would it require a certain amount of parking? 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Yes. 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  And the restaurants too?  And so   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  But it's not based upon use, it's based upon floor area.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  It's?  I'm sorry?
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Our standard in Ridgewood is based upon floor area, not based upon the use in most cases. And so whether you have a supermarket or whether you have an office, whether you have some other type of use, the parking standard is the same. So in the B 2 zone, as I said before, it's one parking space for every 200 square feet. So for every 1,000 square feet of that supermarket, which was 52,000, I think, 52 and change, you would need about 261 parking spaces on the property.  And you could do the math; each parking space with aisles and islands and so forth, generally say you get three parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of land if it's surface parking.  So that's where I was going, and you can do    they only have 116,000 square feet of land, so you only have about 60,000 more so of land left after you put down a supermarket. If you get three parking spaces per 1,000, you're going to get about 180 parking spaces versus the 260 that you need.  And that's why I was saying that in some cases, you may actually get less floor area than what's in John's table.  I don't know that it's relevant in that it's still comparable or it's still more than what   
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Right.  And using that number it was still   
MR. BRANCHEAU:     yes and that's where I was going with that question. 
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Here okay.  Thank you.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  I don't think it changes the conclusions, but I wanted that to be clear.
MAYOR ARONSOHN:  Okay.  Thanks.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Blais, thanks.  Paul, thanks. 
Gail, you have any question for John?
MS. PRICE:  I only had one thing with John. 
My question goes back to the question on the Residential Site Improvement Standards.  The Residential Site Improvement Standards are not applicable to commercial development; I think you agreed on that. 
MR. JAHR:  Right, correct.
MS. PRICE:  But they are mandatory for residential, correct?
MR. JAHR:  But they also    well, it's    I believe that when you have mass transit or other clear reasons to not use it   
MS. PRICE:  You can get a waiver? 
MR. JAHR:  It's    in there    in there it clearly states that the Board has had the discretion to usurp those requirements.
MS. PRICE:  My    my first question, though, is is that is it your understanding that the Municipal Land Use Law and this inclusion of the Residential Site Improvement Standards makes those standards uniform throughout the state?
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  So those standards don't change whether you have a    you know, depending on your different community? 
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MS. PRICE:  So our standard would be the same standard as Wyckoff, would be the same standard as Midland Park, would be the same standard   
MR. JAHR:  The only thing that makes it so you would not have to apply that standard is the fact that you are so close to a train station.
MS. PRICE:  And in that case, the Board would have the discretion to make those standards less?
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MS. PRICE:  Not greater? 
MR. JAHR:  Correct.
MS. PRICE:  That's correct.
I just want that clear for the record because that's a mandatory provision of the MLUL.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Yeah, there was a question as to whether we could use alternate standards, we can, but only to lower, not to increase.
MS. PRICE:  Correct.  Okay. 
Thank you, Blais.
MR. JAHR:  Some of the boards I work on have already adopted ordinances that have a higher parking requirement or a higher parking standard than is required by RSIS.
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  Well, they should be in litigation.
MR. JAHR:  So I assume that the Board could adopt a standard that's higher.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  The state    I think the state   
MR. JAHR:  They have   
MR. BRANCHEAU:     the state allows if you petition the state and you can demonstrate a case, They    and it's a process you have to go through, the state allows you to adopt different standards than the RSIS, but you have to make the case. 
MS. PRICE:  But there's a whole process.  
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  That the regs themselves say that they're    and there was a Supreme Court case that said that it was, you know, it could not be altered.  There are procedures for filing for the exceptions, but that the attempt to    the argument that was made was, well, everybody is not the same, so you shouldn't be treated the same.  And that argument was rejected.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Right.
MS. PRICE:  That's all I have.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Great.
MR. JAHR:  I'd like to just    I don't want to go  
MS. PRICE:  I think that the Chairman wants to go through    
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes, I'm not finished yet.
MR. JAHR:  Fire away.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  I'm looking at the time. 
Andy, Ira, and    is it Kevin? 
MR. McGOWAN:  Yes.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes.  Do you have questions, and are they substantial in which case we can carry Counsel questions to the next meeting.
MS. PRICE:  Well, Mr. Bruinooge's were definitely carried, right?
MR. McGOWAN:  Correct.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yeah.  Okay. 
MS. PRICE:  To the 19th because we had arranged for that already.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  So the answer is yes.  What we can do is just begin Counsel questioning.
MR WEINER:  Well, I'm not going to be here on the 19th.
MS. PRICE:  You're not going to be here on the 19th, Ira?  Okay. 
And, Andy? 
MR. KOHUT:  We have no questions.
MS. PRICE:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Why don't we go ahead, then, Ira.  I'll give you the opportunity. 
MR. WEINER:  I don't have many.
MS. PRICE:  You don't have many?  Okay.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes.
(Whereupon, an off the record discussion is held between Ms. Price and Chairman Nalbantian.)  
MR. WEINER:  Mr. Jahr, picking up on some of the questions we just went through, relative to the supermarket and its usage, full build out you were talking about, the as of right, what was your process in the planning of which uses out of all the uses in the zone to put on the list? 
MR. JAHR:  Actually, the process was multi fold.  One was I had my own opinion, so some of them are purely my discretion.
MR. WEINER:  So if I understand you, this is an arbitrary list that could theoretically show more traffic than other uses that might be in the zone? 
MR. JAHR:  I tried to pick things that were realistic, you know, it may not be the easiest thing to do. 
MR. WEINER:  So this is arbitrary, then, on your part as to which uses you're going to show the Board that when they have them make a determination about how, you know, whether the traffic is going to be more or less than what they're considering. 
MR. JAHR:  Well, there are potentially thousands of land uses I could do generations for.
If you would like to pick any of them, I would be more than happy to add that to the list.
MR. WEINER:  But, well   
MR. JAHR:  These uses came up by discussions, by the various meetings that I've attended, by discussions with    you know, listening to the Board and what things they were discussing, you know, I actually asked one of the    I was kind of    I had to actually ask about The Enclave one because I couldn't figure out what to make of that site. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, but, the point is, if you're sitting here and comparing what is as of right in the ordinance, wouldn't it make sense to list all the uses that are permitted in the zone, do a calculation so that everybody could see, yes, 90 percent of them are worse or 90 percent are better.  To pick three or four arbitrarily because you decided that maybe you think it's realistic doesn't really give the Board the neutral information they might want; wouldn't you agree?
MR. JAHR:  No, that's not accurate, sir. In all reality, okay, the ordinance provides for retail uses or office uses, those kind of generalities, right?  So I tried to make them   
MR. WEINER:  I don't know, you tell me.  Is that what it provides?  Why don't you    why don't you tell me what are    what are the permitted uses where The Dayton is? 
MR. JAHR:  That would be the planner's question. 
MR. WEINER:  No.  No. This is the basis for your chart was that they were as of right; I'm asking you what is in the zone.  You pick certain ones; I don't know if these are uses    you know, I got the chart today, had I had it back in my July, It would have been easier for me; I would have gone through it.  I didn't have a chance to do that. I'm asking you what's permitted?  What else is permitted in the zone that doesn't appear here? 
MS. PRICE:  Do you have the code with you tonight, Mr. Jahr? 
MR. JAHR:  I do not have the code with me tonight. Ordinarily, when that question gets asked, I would ask the planner to provide that answer. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, this is   
MR. JAHR:     I would    I would like to perhaps have him answer    
MR. WEINER:  Well, the reason I'm asking you is because   
MS. PRICE:  Wait.  Wait.  Let's just ask and answer one at a time.
MR. WEINER:  I'm sorry. The reason I'm asking the question is because you based your opinion on that.  And now I'm asking you whether    for the basis of it, and you're saying:  I don't know, you've gotta ask the planner. 
MS. PRICE:  Well, if you want to show him the code, maybe   
MR. JAHR:  Well, I don't have it. 
MS. PRICE:  You don't have the code? 
MR. WEINER:  I didn't have it.  I didn't anticipate that we were going to have a new chart tonight.
MS. PRICE:  Is this chart any different than the chart that you used in work session? 
MR. JAHR:  Well, there may be   
MR. WEINER:  Well, whatever was part of the work session is not part of   
MR. JAHR:  There are some changes in the size of those things because the developments have gotten   
MS. PRICE:  I mean, I'm just asking him  
MR. JAHR:     the developments have gotten smaller.
MR. WEINER:  Okay.  I don't know what the    I don't know how relevance that is.  Last time we tried to use something from work session, we got yelled at.
MS. PRICE:  But it's in. 
MR. WEINER:  Huh? 
MS. PRICE:  It's in the record, right? 
MR. WEINER:  That's not the record.  You said at the outset that everything in the work session was outside the record.  I don't know.
MS. PRICE:  But Ms. Bogert's report included stuff that was from the work session.
MR. WEINER:  Yeah, and when    and there was an objection made and there was a ruling that she couldn't talk about Blais' September 18th report because it was the outside the record.
MS. PRICE:  All I asked was is this the same information that was used in work session?
MR. WEINER:  Well, I don't know    okay.  That's fine.  But I don't know    that doesn't help me tonight.  So, all right.
MS. PRICE:  If you don't have the code and he doesn't have code, then we can't look at these. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, I understand that.  But anyway, let me    let's move on.
It's gotten    it's not a question of that.  It's a question of he's giving you an opinion based upon his supposed review of the code and his selection of arbitrary uses, to try to compare them to what you're considering. 
All I'm pointing out is that he doesn't know what the other uses are and he picked them arbitrarily.  That's all.  I'll move on.
MR. KOHUT:  I'm going to object he didn't say he didn't know he said he didn't have them all in front of him right now.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yeah. 
MR. KOHUT:  So I'm going to object to that comment.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  I think we should leave this one be for now and move on   
MR. KOHUT:  Sure.  
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:    to the next question. 
MR. WEINER:  Okay.  That's fine.
Now, what the peak hour for a supermarket.
MR. JAHR:  I don't have data in front of me.
MR. WEINER:  Well, you said you had    you had a chart that compares peak hours and you said to the Board, see, this is more in the peak hour.  Is this the same?  Are they all the same?  That you ought to be able to answer, Are the peak hours all the same for all the uses?
MR. JAHR:  No.  The peak hours vary for different uses.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  So the peak hour for the supermarket might be the middle of the day.
MR. JAHR:  No, no, no. 
MR. WEINER:  And it    it could be?  Right?
MR. JAHR:  And the peak hour data we're providing here is the street peak hour, not the driveway peak hour.  Okay? There are two different    there are two different things to look at.  Okay? 
My concern is to the Village of Ridgewood. 
MR. WEINER:  Right.
MR. JAHR:  So the analysis I'm doing is based on the peak hour in Ridgewood, not the peak hours of, say, a ShopRite.  ShopRite might peak at six in the morning at their driveway, but the adjacent street traffic is what we're concerned with.  We're concerned with at the time when the traffic is busiest in Ridgewood, and how much traffic that would add to Ridgewood's traffic.  That's the analysis I'm doing.
MR. WEINER:  I'm a little confused. Are you saying to me all these numbers are when the peak hour    when the traffic is the greatest in Ridgewood?
MR. JAHR:  Yup.  Yes, sir.
MR. WEINER:  What hour is that?
MR. JAHR:  Ridgewood's peak in the morning is sometime between seven and nine, and four to six at night.  And it varies from intersection to intersection.  You'd have to pick a specific location for me to tell you exactly what their peak hour at that location is. So, for example, at the intersection of Franklin and Maple, the morning peak hour maybe 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning, and the evening peak hour may be 4:30 to 5:30.
MR. WEINER:  So at The Dayton you have a bunch of different uses, and you've got an in and an out peak hour, what hour is that?
MR. JAHR:  It's irrelevant what hour it is.  That's the busiest hour   
MR. WEINER:  Well, why don't you   
MR. JAHR:  It's the busiest hour. 
MR. WEINER:  Why don't you let the Board decide what's irrelevant   
MR. JAHR:  I'm sorry.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  No, no, no.
MR. JAHR:  It's the busiest hour. I'm sorry.  It's the busiest hour.  It's the busiest hour.
MR. WEINER:  Well, what hour is it?  Maybe    maybe the Board thinks that might be important? 
MR. JAHR:  It's the busiest hour.  That's the answer. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, if the busiest hour is one to two, maybe they care about commuter hours because that's getting worse; that could be more important to people than what's going in the middle of the day?  That's    it's not your job to decide what's important.  I'm asking you, what's the peak hour here? 
MR. JAHR:  Based on standard ITE practice, the a.m. peak hour and p.m. peak hour are the analysis hours which should be used for the traffic study, not two o'clock in the afternoon, not based on when the train comes in.  All right? 
MR. WEINER:  Yes.
MR. JAHR:  That is the    the criteria that we    that we utilize, that I utilize, that the county utilizes, the state utilizes, in order to evaluate the traffic impacts at any location.
MS. PRICE:  So I think Mr. Weiner's question is, do you have any information with you that can answer his question as the what the morning peak hour and the evening peak hour, just staying with weekday for the moment, what the Ridgewood    because you used the street peak, not the driveway peak for the use, what the street peak for those time periods are?
MR. JAHR:  I know what they are for each individual location    
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  Not    not for any development or anything   
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  All right.
MR. JAHR:  This list is not   
MS. PRICE:  So do you want to go through every intersection, Mr. Weiner? 
MR. WEINER:  No, I really don't, but I have some questions about what we're looking at.
So, for example, you have in and out, both The Dayton and the supermarket, you have in 110, out [68.] All right? So you're telling me that's just the peak hour for the traffic in Ridgewood for the day, whatever the peak hour. 
MS. PRICE:  Weekday.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Morning weekday. 
MR. JAHR:  That would be the morning peak hour. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, that   
MR. JAHR:  It's between seven and nine in the morning.
MR. WEINER:  Well, it's an hour, which hour is it?  7:30 to 8:30; during the day? 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  It's a range. 
MR. WEINER:  I'm asking, Do you know? 
MR. JAHR:  It would be the    it would be    it doesn't    it would be one hour between seven to nine, the busiest hour.
MR. WEINER:  Mr. Jahr, I've been through this a lot of times.  I have a lot of engineers come up and they go and take counts, and they tell me the peak hour is from 7:45 to 8:45.  It's one hour. 
What's the hour, you're talking about here? 
MR. JAHR:  You're looking    you're comparing apples to oranges.
MR. WEINER:  No, I'm not. 
MR. JAHR:  You are comparing   
MR. WEINER:  Answer my question.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Let him answer the question, please.
MR. JAHR:  These are trip generation numbers for the one busiest hour.  So if I'm looking at the, for example, the intersection of Maple and Franklin, and the peak hour is 7:30 to 8:30, those would be the numbers that I added to the 7:30 to 8:30 numbers.
MR. WEINER:  Do you have data to support this?
MR. JAHR:  This is    this entire chart is based on the Institute of Transportation Engineers, Ninth Edition, Traffic Generation Handbook.
MR. WEINER:  Does that book tell you whether the peak hour is from seven to eight in Ridgewood, or from 7:15 to 8:15, or from 8:30 to 9:30?
MR. JAHR:  This number in this chart is the one busiest hour that occurs there. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, I'm asking   
MR. JAHR:  At the peak hour in Ridgewood is where I would add that number to.
MS. PRICE:  Did you do    you testified earlier that you did independent counts, did you do independent counts to determine the peak hour as well as the counts?  Did you determine peak hour during the compilation of your counts? 
MR. JAHR:  At individual locations, yes.
MS. PRICE:  Okay.  And then you utilized that peak hour in preparation of this exhibit, which I don't have the marking yet? 
MR. JAHR:  No.  That peak hour, the Ridgewood peak hour, whatever it might be at any particular location, is irrelevant to this table.
MS. PRICE:  Because this table is only based upon the ITE Ninth Edition   
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MS. PRICE:     correct? 
MR. JAHR:  This is just trip generation. 
MS. PRICE:  Just use.
MR. JAHR:  This is just the number that gets added to that hour at any analysis locations that I looked at. 
MS. PRICE:  Okay.
MR. WEINER:  So you're telling me that the peak hour first    and might even    maybe I'm wrong about this, so I just want to make sure. 
The supermarket that you're comparing, you're saying, well the supermarket generates a lot of morning traffic; is that right?  Is that what you're saying, that during the peak hour in Ridgewood, the supermarket generates 110 in and out.
MR. JAHR:  What I'm saying here is that, if a supermarket were built on that site, in the a.m. peak hour, it would generate a total of 178 trips.  That's what this chart says (indicating). 
It further does that with the p.m. peak hour, the weekday, to give you a broad understanding of the amount of traffic that's generated by that kind of a land use.
MR. WEINER:  Well, but you said you didn't do driveway counts.  It's not the   
MR. JAHR:  No.
MR. WEINER:  Is it the trips by the generator or...
MR. JAHR:  This is    this is for    this is the trips for the adjacent street traffic.  All right?  The ITE manual gives us both.  Okay? 
MR. WEINER:  Could you explain that, how that works, the difference? 
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  There are    there are two different types of    of traffic    trip generation that we can look for a site.  Okay? 
We can look at what's happening exactly at the driveway, which is called the generator.  Okay?  And we could look at the peak hour of the generator, itself, which for a supermarket might occur six o'clock in the morning, per se.  That is not a very useful number for me because, if at 7:30 at that same location, I have much more traffic in my ambient street network, I want to know how much traffic the supermarket is putting on the road at 7:30. Because what's happening at six isn't    isn't helping me very much.  It doesn't tell me really what impact that supermarket's having.  So if on Franklin Avenue we put a supermarket and it peaks at    the generator    the supermarket peaked at six, that data, those trips aren't affecting the network nearly as badly as the trips that come on board at 7:30 because, for example, between 7:30 and 8:00, there may be 200 cars on East Ridgewood Avenue, or at six o'clock in the morning, there's 10. So    now, albeit the supermarket might generate 50 trips in the morning at the generator's peak hour, and may only generate 30 trips at the adjacent street peak hour, those are the trips that have a much higher impact against the 200 than the 50 trips have against the ten of 20 cars on the road at six in the morning. So we look at the more conservative analysis of when they have the biggest impact, and that's the peak hour traffic, peak hour of the adjacent street traffic.
MR. WEINER:  All right.
MR. JAHR:  This is very technical.  And so, you know, if you like, we can   
MR. WEINER:  Well, no, the reason I was asking about the hours because it makes    because is I think it makes a difference, and it's important to the Board.  Because if the supermarket's generating traffic between 8:30 and 9:30, that's the number, because that's the busiest time, that may or may not be as important to the Board as people that are going and coming from work.  I know a lot of boards and people care about the commuter rush.  And, generally speaking, retail is not doing very much during the commuter rush.  And you got numbers that are upside down; you're telling me that a supermarket is doing a lot more traffic than    early in the morning, when they're basically empty, okay, than    than a residential property, where people are coming and leaving for work. So that's why I'm questioning it; it doesn't seem right.  I mean, I don't know how    I understand how    I understand all the theory.  And I understand all the engineering of how you go about what you think is important for Ridgewood.  I think I    what I would have thought was, you take an hour between 7:30 and 9:30 and say, what does this generate, because if you want the compare "A" to "B", I want to know what "A" is generating during the peak, the peak hour, if it's the same peak hour, versus "B". So I acknowledge that commercial property does it much more later in the day, but there are some other retail uses here.  A lot of towns don't care about retail as much because it's in the morning, because it doesn't generate anything.  So that's why I'm asking the question. 
MR. JAHR:  Well, actually you bring up a very good point, and that is that it helpful to everyone to note that retail and commercial and commuting have similar trip patterns. And residential typically has the opposite trip patterns.  So that's also another matter for you to consider when looking at changes in zoning in that if we already have a very busy train station that has a significant commuter traffic to it, and if you consider putting in opposite use, i.e., residential, their traffic pattern would be different. 
So, for example, everybody's coming into Ridgewood in the morning to go to the train station or go to businesses.  If you put a residential use in, they will typically be going out, unless they're going to the train station; hopefully, we have them walk there. So it's a very good point you make. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, do you have    you said you did counts.  Did you    I didn't see them in the reports.  Do you have them someplace that you're going to provide, the actual counts that you took? 
MR. JAHR:  No, I wasn't planning on providing counts in this    in this venue. 
The counts were done by me and my staff to look at locations that weren't part of the other developers' studies.  In other words, I did them in order to verify that the data that I got from them made sense.  If you like, I could provide you with that information.  I don't    well, I don't see the relevance of it, but I don't see any problem providing it. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  It's not necessary, I don't think. 
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, I mean, quite frankly   
MR. WEINER:  Well, it only goes    look it's like everything else, it goes to whether or not this is an opinion based on mystical facts out here that an engineer tells you that he did or whether he provides this to you, and I understand he's your board engineer, but, you know...
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  You've asked him if he's done counts, and if he's used that    those counts in coming to his conclusions, and he answered that question, I believe.
MS. PRICE:  I actually asked. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  You asked the question.
MS. PRICE:  I asked him and he testified that he did do counts and he utilized the counts. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, that's fine, but as far as I'm concerned, if you don't produce the counts it a net opinion.
MS. PRICE:  But   
MR. WEINER:  But that's my position.
MS. PRICE:  Well   
MR. JAHR:  Well, but it's an important thing in that I    I relied very heavily on the data that these developers provided to us. So I felt an obligation to go out and check that data, you know, if    for example, I just couldn't take their    their word for everything here, so, you know... 
MR. WEINER:  I wasn't being critical   
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, that   
MR. WEINER:     of the fact that you went out and took counts. 
MR. JAHR:  Yeah.
MR. WEINER:  I was just asking where they were.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  Well, they were not provided to the Board because that level of analysis is not provided at this time.
MR. WEINER:  Okay.  On some of the parking    I just have a couple of question.  You said you did this, you took the most conservative way of doing all your numbers because you need to do it that way. 
Now, when you do both for trip generation and the parking analysis, ITE gives you several different numbers you can use; one's an average number   
MR. JAHR:  Yup.
MR. WEINER:     one's, I think, a 35 percentile, and one's an 85 percentile.  
MR. JAHR:  Right.  It varies all over, yeah. 
MR. WEINER:  But in the book, in the parking manual, I'm looking at it, it's 85th percentile and 33rd percentile.
MR. JAHR:  Right.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  Now, your counts on the parking that you gave testimony on all the    on the three projects, you used the average; am I correct? 
MR. JAHR:  I have to look up and see what I did.  I'm looking right now, give me one second
I believe I    ordinarily I would, let me look and see.  Average. 
MR. WEINER:  Isn't it standard engineering, traffic engineering practice, that when you want to be conservative, you use the 85th percentile because if you use the average, you're wrong half the time?
MR. JAHR:  I wouldn't agree with that.
MR. WEINER:  No? Well, if it's an average, half the numbers are above and half are below.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Gail? 
MS. PRICE:  I think he answered the question, Mr. Weiner. 
MR. WEINER:  Okay.  You don't agree, fine. 
If you use the 85th percentile, would your parking conclusions be the same or would you have to do that analysis? 
MR. JAHR:  I believe that I could probably    I would have to check the numbers for exactness    
MR. WEINER:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:     but all of the development appears to have been providing    actually, two of them I believe are almost RSIS, if not RSIS, and the other one, it's very difficult to get the right number on, albeit we did finally figure it out. I believe that if we went to the more stringent ITE standards, we would still be comparable.  I would have to do    I can check that if you felt that was necessary.  I think it wouldn't be far    too very different between the average of the 85th. If anything, I think it probably makes a lot more sense if we wanted to    to really, you know, exacerbate the parking issue is go to the 95th percentile because that basically guarantees there will always be parking spaces available, you know, based on the definition. 
MR. WEINER:  All right.  Did you calculate out or factor in all the rest of the property that's been covered by the Master Plan Amendment? You didn't do any studies or analysis of those, did you? 
MR. JAHR:  Could you be more specific with your question? 
MR. WEINER:  Well, the Master Plan Amendment doesn't only cover these three properties, there are other sites that you included within that Amendment. Were you asked or did you study the other sites and their traffic, like you did here, for the other three?
MR. JAHR:  My analysis included more than just the three applications on the Board now, there was one that was dropped, and there was another site. My analysis included not only all of those sites, but also a generalization of changes that could take place within the CBD, and what would happen if they added more residential to it.
MR. WEINER:  Well   
MR. JAHR:  It's    I think you    I will not be able to give you a specific amount of how much of the rezoning area I can take into account for with regard to the specific individual uses.  So what I did is I said, based on the land mass of the four applications that I had before me, and the amount of land that's available in the entire CBD zone that is in the rezoning, okay, I looked at that and said, what if I were to convert a certain percentage from retail or office to residential.  Okay? And what I did is I ran some preliminary numbers, nothing that could be considered completely comprehensive.  All right.  However, in general terms for an overall broad picture, all right, I did take into account that there could be other changes to this.  And overall, the answer pretty much came up the same; actually overall the answer came up the same every time.  And that is, if you replace retail or office with a residential component in similar square footage, based on    remember, this is    a lot of math that went in this    because it isn't a one for one ratio.  You can't just say well, one square foot of office and one square foot of residential, how do you use the square footage based on these    these developments, all right, in the hopes that whatever the Board, whatever would approve, would be at this density or less for residential.
MR. WEINER:  Well, what page   
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  And then   
MR. WEINER:     what page is that information on of your reports.
MR. JAHR:  The reports that you have are specific to the    to the three   
MR. WEINER:  Well, you said   
MR. JAHR:     developments that were provided. 
MR. WEINER:  You proposed all this other information and did all these other analyses; where is that? 
MR. JAHR:  This was in order for me to establish an opinion on what happens if you change from retail or commercial/office? 
MR. WEINER:  And that   
MS. PRICE:  Well   
MR. WEINER:  And that   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Let him finish.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  And that's exactly the problem.  I understand why you did it.  I am asking for your data and analysis to support that opinion.  Where is it in the report that somebody can look at? 
MR. JAHR:  Well, I think that you can support that in the report that's presented to you in the as of right analysis and the comparisons that were done for the existing development.  Like I stated earlier, we use these developments that are before the Board now as a litmus for what will happen globally.  All right? 
In order for us to go to the next step, okay, there is going    there is going to have to be a further study.  And if the    if the town feels that this is a route they want to go, and they want to find a way to reduce traffic volumes by changing land use, okay, which is my    only my bailiwick in this, okay, then there will have to be further work done on what    how that's going to affect and what's going to happen. 
Clearly, based on the litmus we presented here with these specific developments, all right, if there is going to be a change from retail/commercial to residential, the traffic volumes should be less.
MR. WEINER:  Where is your analysis to substantiate that?
MR. JAHR:  I believe that it's stated in the three reports    
MR. WEINER:  All right.
MR. JAHR:     the individual developments   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Let him finish.
MR. JAHR:     and I think that if you take a holistic or a general view of the as of right, you'll find that statement to be accurate. 
MR. WEINER:  Well...
MR. JAHR:  Why would you think it would be different?
MR. WEINER:  Well, let me ask you a question, what kind of traffic does a clothing store generate in the morning perk hour?
MR. JAHR:  It's a retail store.  It's going to be   
MR. WEINER:  All right.
MR. JAHR:  It's retail traffic.  It's going to be traffic of the opposite direction of residential, and it's going to be whatever this square footage of that retail center is.
MR. WEINER:  Why would it be    how do you know it'd be the opposite direction of residential?  How do you make that conclusion?
MR. JAHR:  So as long as no one lives there, they should be going to work in the morning, unless they live    unless they live and work in their apartments.
MR. WEINER:  Well, if people were    I mean, all right, what I'm asking    what I'm asking is, what's the    what's the counts for that?  I mean, we know that the ITE did not    the ITE breaks down, beyond retail, they have things for dry cleaners and clothing stores and hardware stores, and all that kind of stuff, right?
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MR. WEINER:  So why didn't you factor some of those and put in there?  Because your conclusions are based on medical offices and supermarkets, which are very high uses. How do we know that if we went through and put all the other kinds of uses that could go in there, we might not find out that 75 percent of the uses that could go in would be less than residential?  How do we know that unless you did the work? 
MR. JAHR:  Well, you know something, I would have to    to put that question to the Board, to understand the magnitude of what you're saying. There are easily a thousand different land uses that could be evaluated in a retail component.  The ITE land use for retail has probably over a thousand different derivations.  Okay? I would say, with a high level of confidence, that generally the retail, any retail, whether it's a hardware store or a dry cleaner or a clothing store, is going to have a higher trip generation than a single, you know, than some kind of a residential.  That's    that's   
MR. WEINER:  In the morning peak?
MR. JAHR:  Not necessarily in the morning peak. 
MR. WEINER:  Okay.
MR. JAHR:  The morning, the clear   
MR. WEINER:  All right.
MR. JAHR:  Absolutely, in the p.m. peak. 
In the morning peak, it could vary because   
MR. WEINER:  I    I agree with you in the p.m. peak.
MR. JAHR:  Okay. 
MR. WEINER:  In the morning peak   
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, in the morning, could it not   
MR. WEINER:  In the morning peak   
MR. JAHR:     yeah, it could be    I think there's some examples in my chart, though, isn't there.
MR. WEINER:  I don't know.  I mean, you put a self storage facility.  I mean, there are others. 
All I'm suggesting    I'm not saying you had to list a thousand    but there are a lot of other kinds of retail, You seem to have slanted this, in my view, to the high    the high, heavy duty medical office, one the highest generators both for parking and traffic.  Supermarkets   
MR. JAHR:  But    but   
MR. WEINER:  I mean no   
MR. JAHR:  You know, there's a methodology to that.  There's a medical office right next to the   
MR. WEINER:  But you can't   
MR. JAHR:  And I didn't just pull it out of the air.
MR. WEINER:  I understand that; I'm not accusing you of intentionally trying to slant it.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.
MR. WEINER:  What I'm saying is, you decided that because there's a medical office, that's the one we should use.
Maybe the Board wants to hear about maybe some of the other kind of uses that might come in so I have a    I have a broad, evenhanded picture, not a slanted picture based on your particular view    
MR. JAHR:  Okay.
MR. WEINER:     which is not based upon any data, just your own opinion.
MR. JAHR:  Well, I disagree, because I think the Board asked me those questions   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yeah.
MR. JAHR:     and I show on the chart    
MR. WEINER:  All right.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Mr. Weiner, I think you've made your point on that.
MR. WEINER:  And I'll move on.  I'll move on.  I think the Board    the Board's got the point. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  I have a question for you relating to this, do you generally take your data, based on what potentially could occur on these lots for single purpose retail or    it seems like they're single purpose retail examples, or a single purpose commercial, as opposed to multiple stores that may occur on a streetscape.
MR. JAHR:  Yes, the reason    yes, we do typically try to do it that way. 
If    it would exacerbate the numbers if we did multiple uses.  Multiple uses tend to make the    the generation go even higher.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay. 
MR. WEINER:  I've just got a couple more questions, then I'll be done. 
When you    with your as of right chart, did you actually go out and do any    try to do any either    not engineer the plan, but do some engineering, to determine how you would fit a building on the    on site and account for all the other regulations, like setbacks and landscaping and buffers and impervious coverage; did you do any of that? 
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, we    we    it was very challenging.  We    we did our very best to try and come up with numbers that made sense, bearing in mind that these sites are constrained. So it was it    and hence the reason why, if    if you look at that    it's like, for example, our discussion with Blais; I think that was similar to a point that Blais was making. Well, you know, can you really get 52,000 square feet of supermarket on there.  Okay?  That was a number that we came up with after looking at the offset FAR and putting up a certain percentage of the parking, you know, as a deck parking, because that seemed to be the    the trend that the work was going.
MR. WEINER:  Did you provide anywhere how you did that?  Not    I understand you did it; have you provided that to the Board so they can    so somebody else could look at it, and see if the way you went about it, they believe was appropriate or maybe made an error or maybe think it was great. 
MR. JAHR:  The information I provided here is as accurate as I can make it, based on the size of the site.
MR. WEINER:  I'm not asking   
MS. PRICE:  No, Mr.    Mr. Jahr.
MR. WEINER:  That's not what I asked.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Just answer the question.
MS. PRICE:  Wait.  Wait.
MR. JAHR:  No, I have not provided the calculation sheet   
MR. WEINER:  That's not responsive.  I have a right to object to a non responsive answer   
MS. PRICE:  Wait.  All right.
MR. WEINER:  I want an answer.  Did you    did you provide it? 
MR. JAHR:  I did not provide the calculation sheets for the square footages that we came to the Board at any point.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  Did you    did you provide any information of how you went about    did you factor in setbacks or landscaping or any of the other regulations?
MR. JAHR:  I did not provide any further explanation to the Board other than which has been provided here in testimony.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  So you didn't go    you don't have a drawing of the site where you located a building and tried to figure out how much parking would fit on it?
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I do have a drawing of the site where I located the building and put the parking on it.  It's a hand sketch; it's    it's part of our    our record for the project.
MR. WEINER:  All right.  But you didn't    you didn't provide it to anybody? 
MR. JAHR:  It wouldn't be ordinary or customary for me to provide my hand calculations or my    my    my calculations of this nature for something like this.
MR. WEINER:  And while we're talking about what's likely, you would agree that if the Board went ahead and adopted this Amendment, and the Council went ahead and rezoned it, the likelihood is that things are going to get worse before they get better, notwithstanding the comparison of what could be there, because you're going to have two or three developers who are actually going to build these buildings and put more traffic into an already difficult traffic situation. 
MR. JAHR:  Well, I don't know what the question is. 
MR. WEINER:  Well, I mean it's   
MR. JAHR:  I need a question.
MR. WEINER:  It's been zoned this way for a long time; nobody's built a supermarket; nobody's built the medical office. 
What they're saying is, if you rezone this, you're going to get these buildings.  That's going to make it worse, rather than better.  Subject, of course, unless other things happen and everybody fixes all the lights and all the other things you talked about. 
MR. JAHR:  I think that's what this Board needs to work hard to make sure doesn't happen. 
MR. WEINER:  All right.  And   
MR. JAHR:  As far as, will it get worse before it gets any better?  If the Board and the town fathers do not enact policies and procedures that, you know, protect itself from increasing    you know, from ever increasing traffic volumes and out of control development, yes, it will get worse.
MR. WEINER:  And one of the ways to do that is to be very careful about whatever densities they might approve with multi family housing; is that correct?
MR. JAHR:  Or any other use, agreed. 
MR. WEINER:  All right.  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Mr. Weiner.
MS. PRICE:  I just have a couple of questions.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes, Gail, go ahead. 
MS. PRICE:  John, could I ask you a couple of follow up questions on that? 
When you do a traffic study and a report, if this were a development similar to the questions Mr. Weiner were asking you, and in addition to the trip generation analysis that you would do, if it was a retail development, for instance, you would do a pass by credit analysis, correct? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes, I would.
MS. PRICE:  And by that I mean if you have a development, all cars on the roadway systems are assumed not just to be destination oriented, that they're already on the road, so that there's a certain percentage that can be assumed and provided by credit   
MR. JAHR:  Correct.
MS. PRICE:     that are on the road and are already are going someplace so that that particular use is given that pass by credit, correct?
MR. JAHR:  Yes, that's correct.
MS. PRICE:  Did you, in any of these numbers, take advantage of assigning a pass by credit that would diminish or modify the numbers that are provided?
MS. PRICE:  No, we did not provide any pass by credits to reduce the trip generation.  We felt that we were trying to provide realistic numbers within, you know, the range, what could be expected, so that we didn't    and that's also a    more of a specific analysis, much more detailed, we would do that in a much more site specific, you know, more detailed analysis.
MS. PRICE:  For a site plan?
MR. JAHR:  Yeah, for a site plan. 
MS. PRICE:  That was my next question.
MR. JAHR:  For something more general like this, it's very difficult to assign a pass by.
MS. PRICE:  And in connection with the work that you did do, with your counts and preparation of your work product    reading of the reports, the various reports that are dated July 15th and are being marked into the record this evening, you make reference that in addition to the count, that you looked at existing conditions and traffic operations, site generation trips during the a.m. and p.m. peak hours, future conditions and traffic operations, recommended improvements, fair share analysis, parking analysis, and that you reviewed each of the three traffic reports and their components; is that correct?
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  So is it fair to say that your study, to the best of your understanding, was done within accepted traffic engineering standards?
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  And following standards that are recognized by the Institution of Transportation Engineers? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. PRICE:  That's all I have.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Gail. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  I have a question.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Blais. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  I think you said this, John, but I just want to make sure, on the residential trip generation, did you factor in anything for people that would walk to the train, to and from the train   
MR. JAHR:  No, we did not.
MR. BRANCHEAU:     or to and from the bus? 
MR. JAHR:  Nope, we didn't factor in any bicycler or walker.  It's all very   
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Okay.  So if someone were to take the train to work or the bus to work, that wouldn't be reflected in this; so this would be more conservative than that?
MR. JAHR:  We took no credits.
MR. BRANCHEAU:  All right.  Same thing with somebody who was living there, who was a senior and was retired; you didn't factor in anything that they're not going to work at all?
MR. JAHR:  Yes, we took no credits. 
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Okay.  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Thank you, Blais.
Any last questions by the Board for Mr. Jahr before we end tonight's proceeding? 
(NO RESPONSE.)
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  No?  No questions?  Okay. 
John, we'll see you on the 19th.  You'll be back. 
This meeting will be continued without further notice to the 19th of August.
MS. PRICE:  Here. 
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Here at the high school, at 7:30 p.m. 
MS. PRICE:  Right, Jane, here.
MS. WONDERGEM:  Yes.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes.  Okay.
MS. PRICE:  Mr. Bruinooge will have an opportunity for cross and then   
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Yes, and also our absent board members.
MS. PRICE:     board members.
CHAIRMAN NALBANTIAN:  Okay.  Thank you.

11:18 p.m. – Discussion re: Referral of Ordinance #3425 by Village Council – Ordinance amending the Land Use and Development chapter of the Village Code to permit surface parking lots as a principal use in the C Zone District – Mr. Brancheau gave a brief explanation and following Board discussion the Board voted to recommend approval of the ordinance.

Discussion re: Referral of Ordinance #3426 by Village Council – Ordinance amending the Land Use and Development chapter of the Village Code in order to amend the requirements for site plan approval – The Board voted to recommend approval of the ordinance.

Discussion re: Pondview Condition of Approval – Mr. Brancheau explained that the Pondview application was approved years ago with several conditions. Mr. Brancheau said that one of the conditions was that an as-built plan is needed for the record and that the architect is no longer working for the applicant. Mr. Brancheau said the applicant is requesting a waiver from submitting architectural plans and substituting a photo record. Ms. Price said the Board will leave it to the discretion of Mr. Brancheau.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:41 P.M.

      Respectfully submitted,
      Jane Wondergem
      Board Secretary

Date approved: January 5, 2016