September 3, 2025 Planning Board Regular Meeting Transcript - WEHI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 11 testifying because he believed that would violate the Townships settlement agreement and the good faith obligations underlying it. After Mr. Redwine's testimony, Mayor McCartney did e-mail Mr. Redwine himself and copied Justin Goldsmith. And in that e-mail the Mayor expressed her displeasure that he testified for the commission, I'm paraphrasing Mayor, if I'm incorrect you can always correct me, I have it here. And that the Mayor felt it was improper, that they should have heeded the advice of legal counsel. That this matters governed by the settlement agreement and then the Mayor quoted Mr. Plocker's letter from May -- excuse me. From May 6, 2025 to the council and various officials. And Mayor McCartney in her letter to Justin -- e-mail to Justin and Jonathan Redwine relied upon Mr. Plocker's advice to the Township in which he said that there should be no criticism or opposition from Township officials to this project because that would be viewed a breach of the settlement agreement. And Mr. Plocker's letter essentially said, directly said, we will consider suing if the Township officials continue to allow comments to be made at Governing Body meetings criticizing this, joined in such comments, failed to criticize such comments, etc. That letter was sent to Ms. McGovern, I don't know if it's on the agenda items

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 12 of documents, but it is in the boards records from Mr. Plocker. We can go into this in more detail, I can submit a writing supporting the motion, but I'm obligated at this point to move -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Submit it in writing and I will review it. MR. AFRAN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Submit it in writing and I will review it with our counsel, please. MR. AFRAN: Okay. MR. PLOCKER: And I'd ask that any documents he referred to -- MR. AFRAN: Any documents we referred to will be provided, and obviously I mean no disrespect to the Mayor, but I believe it represents a issue that requires recusal. So I'm obligated to raise this now before we go further. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Fine. Send me it in writing and we'll take a look at it. MR. AFRAN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Plocker. MR. PLOCKER: Oh, no. I just wanted to make clear that there was some e-mails and communications referenced, I just hope all, everything that Mr. Afran referenced will be produced because I have not seen some

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 13 of the things. MR. AFRAN: Without question. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Okay. MR. AFRAN: I was not a recipient either. I was copied. I was given a copy later. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Got you. Okay. Mayor McCartney. MAYOR McCARTNEY: Sir, I did send an e-mail to Jonathan Redwine because I had been a 20 year town council liaison to the Environmental Commission and what my e-mail stated was that I was disappointed that the Environmental Commission on behalf of some of the members of the Environmental Commission, because we haven't finished this application, it's still pending and we haven't heard from our own engineers. So that's what I wrote in the letter and I didn't have Mr. Plocker's letter. The piece that, the excerpt there came from the TAP article. So that was part of it. But our town council has been provided letters from our Legal Department telling the council also not to respond when people come to the podium during council meetings because there is still an application pending. So I'm sorry if you took that backwards. It wasn't that I was defending in any way Mr. Plocker. I cut and pasted a piece from the TAP article which was sent to me and my

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 14 comment was that I was disappointed because the application is not completed. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Okay. MR. AFRAN: I appreciate that and we will certainly look at your comments Mayor in the context of what we submitted. Thank you. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Okay. Good. We will take a look at it. Mr. Plocker. MR. PLOCKER: And if I may, and without going back to look at my correspondence, which I'm not going to do now and waste everybody's time, I am not, by staying silent, I'm not agreeing that whatever was quoted or not quoted or not -- or spoken by Mr. Afran is exactly what was in my letter and I would like an opportunity to obviously see -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Absolutely. MR. PLOCKER: -- whatever he's going to produce and I could respond. MR. AFRAN: Yeah, no, and I thought I was being clear that I was merely paraphrasing. I was not attempting to quote you nor was I quoting the Mayor's letter. I was paraphrasing. MAYOR McCARTNEY: Thank you. MR. PLOCKER: Thank you, Bruce.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 15 CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: We thank you all very much. MR. AFRAN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: You're up, sir. MR. AFRAN: Okay. We're going to have Mr. Litwornia present his verbal report. We'll qualify him and then they're going to turn to a PDF slide show that Mr. Fagan has. So they won't be using that immediately, that will be used after the verbal report is presented. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Sit down -- Mr. Litwornia, please have a seat, sir. And your colleague. Gentlemen, sit down. Go right ahead. MS. McGOVERN: Who's testifying? Mr. Litwornia, please raise your right-hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. THE WITNESS: Yes, I do. MS. McGOVERN: Would you please put your full name on the record, spell your last name and give your address. MR. AFRAN: Hang on. You need a mic. THE WITNESS: Litwornia. MR. AFRAN: Al, hang on. You need this. Please talk close to it so you're heard.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 THE WITNESS: Thank you. Alexander Litwornia. Address is 3 Trading Post Trail, Medford Lakes, New Jersey. MR. AFRAN: Are you able to hear me, by the way? CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Yeah, I can hear you. MR. AFRAN: We 're going to introduce -- I'll ask Mr. Litwornia if he'll just give his qualifications in the field of civil engineering and professional planning. A. Basically I've been doing engineering and traffic transportation planning for over 30 years. As a matter of fact I was -- reviewed one of the previous applications to the board on this very same project. Most recently we worked in -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Mr. Litwornia, is your license still good in the State of New Jersey? Is your license active. THE WITNESS: Yes, licensed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania at the present time. Previously -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Ladies and gentlemen of the board, Mr. Litwornia has testified before us before. He has esteemed from societies before us so I would recommend we accept him as a traffic engineer. Is that what you're presenting for --

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 17 THE WITNESS: Yes. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: -- Mr. Afran? MR. AFRAN: And as -- well, as a planner and civil engineer. There are other aspects to his testimony, for example under the RSIS standards, so it's not limited to traffic, but he would be testifying as a civil engineer, traffic and other engineering fields and as a planner. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: And your license as a civil engineer and planner is active in the State of New Jersey, is that correct? THE WITNESS: Yes. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Yes. Mr. Litwornia? MR. AFRAN: Al, is your license currently active for engineering and planning in the State of New Jersey? THE WITNESS: Yes. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Okay. Good. MR. AFRAN: I have one quick question -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Any board members have a questions? We'll accept Mr. Litwornia as a civil engineer and traffic engineer. THE WITNESS: And planner.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 18 MR. AFRAN: And I just want to establish for the record, Mr. Litwornia alluded to it but I couldn't quite hear. Q. Mr. Litwornia, I understand you were the engineer -- the expert in these fields for We Care in connection with the 2006 proceeding on a different version of development on this site, is that correct? A. Yes. MR. AFRAN: Okay. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Traffic engineer. MR. PLOCKER: I'm going to object. I think when you talk about We Care, I thought the We Care objector group that is here today was not the same that existed back then. MR. AFRAN: Okay. There was no corporation then. Le me just say that -- let me rephrase it. Q. Mr. Litwornia, I understand you were the traffic engineer who testified as an expert for the objectors in the 2006 hearings concerning this property, is that correct? A. Yes. MR. AFRAN: Okay. Thank you very much. Please proceed with your presentation. CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: Go right ahead, Mr. Litwornia.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 19 THE WITNESS: Basically we had a memo that was presented dated August 22, 2025. The background on this is we looked at this previously, so now we're looking at it again in a new light. There are 496 apartments to be put in place versus the smaller development, less than ten. And what we're doing now is we're looking at it under the auspices of the Residential Site Improvement Standards. The standard of New Jersey presently govern residential development in the state. Most people don't realize but their own ordinances now have been taken over by the state RSIS and it requires you to follow that and it's more stringent than the local ordinances are. One of the things that the state and the RSIS has was the problem with the definition of cul-de-sacs. Cul-de-sacs have been mainly restricted by fire hoses in the past. And how long the fire hoses could be with pressure from the engines and the pumper. So that limited basically in addition to single family houses being built on one acre or half acre to an acre of land, limited the length of cul-de-sacs. Just from some safety reasons more than anything else and fire aspects. Now, cul-de-sacs are defined a street without a -- is defined as a street with simple means --

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 20 single means of ingress and egress and it has a turnaround, the design of which would vary. The design is now just not a bulb of a cul-de-sac but you could have a hammerhead, you could have extra spaces painted so that no one will park in certain spaces. So you have -- the main thing is there's only one way in and one way out of a cul-de-sac. Basically the problem we have at this project is there's only, the whole project as it exists today now is one single point of entry and exit. And since there's only one point of entry and exit it operates as a cul-de-sac. Now, the problem with that is how many cars can you -- how big of a cul-de-sac can you have. The residential Site Improvement Standards people have decided that if you have a sub connection you can use that sub connection to expand, look into it and expand your number of dwelling units that go in and out of the development. The development usually is a large development and comes in with a plan, a general development plan. That general development plan usually shows where the streets are going to go. How the construction traffic will go. How the, how the roadways will be interconnected, how the traffic will affect that and the whole idea is that the plan requires many years