As a courtesy to our SHPOA Members, we’re bringing you a summary of each Stone Harbor Work Session and Council Meeting. Intended as summaries, these intentionally don’t have a lot of details and are not a substitute for the official Borough minutes.

Work session

Planning and Zoning

Council Member Jennifer Gensemer stated that Council would consider a new ordinance to combine Stone Harbor’s Planning and Zoning Boards into a single 9-member panel to review and implement Stone Harbor’s zoning laws to increase transparency and efficiency in construction permitting.

The combined board would establish a “one-stop” planning and zoning process supervised by a single engineer to eliminate duplication of effort in communication, minimize conflicts challenges, and legal fees. Gensemer asserted that the Joint Board would provide the Council essential feedback from the impact of zoning decisions and lead to a better process and end-result for updating the Borough’s Master Plan.

The draft ordinance was expected to be completed by November 10 and circulated to the Council for review. Council agreed to conduct a special meeting on November 17 to allow the public to comment on proposals to combine the boards and raise any additional concerns regarding zoning and the permitting process.

The ordinance is expected to be introduced on November 21, so that it could come up for final consideration at a special meeting expected to take place between December 27 and 29.

Regular Meeting

Anticipating the potential revision to the Borough’s zoning and permitting process, Council voted to table or postpone consideration of pending ordinances that had been subject to public debate. The ordinances pertain to bulkheads, side yards and lot grading:
Ordinance 1654. Amending the Zoning Code for Bulkhead and Habitable Story;
Ordinance 1657. Amending Side yard Setbacks in Residential Zones A, B, and C to Retain Open Space;
Ordinance 1658. Amending Chapter 560, Section 50 concerning lot grading.
By tabling or postponing consideration of these ordinances, Council is free to bring them up again.

In other action, Council approved:
Ordinance 1655. Amending the side yard zoning code encroachments into side yards along the beach and bay to conform to existing zoning enforcement.
Ordinance 1656 amending the zoning code concerning fences to address lot grading requirements. The ordnance provides limited exceptions to fence height restrictions when the adjacent property has made changes due to grading requirements. It also eliminates permit fees to bring noncompliant pool fences into compliance and restricts the height, width and dimensions of arbors, trellises and other structures.
Resolution S218. Allowing the transfer of $245,000 in funding from various administration accounts. The bulk of the funding ($133,000) would be used to cover a short fall in funding for Fire Department overtime expenses and ($50,000) in legal fees.

For legislation discussed at the meeting, please click: https://stoneharbornj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/11.07.2023-Regular-Meeting-Agenda.pdf

For a video of the meeting, please click: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qLbI6DAXTE
To read past Stone Harbor Council Meeting summaries, please click here: https://www.stoneharborpoa.org/category/borough-meeting-summaries/

To watch recordings of past meetings, please click here: https://stoneharbornj.org/agendameetings/watch-mayor-and-council-meetings-online/