The Franklin Township Council convened for a work session and regular meeting on September 13, 2022. The meeting featured extensive public comment on warehouse development, cannabis licensing, traffic safety, and environmental concerns. The council adopted several ordinances and approved the consent agenda with two cannabis-related resolutions pulled for a separate vote.
To the state of New Jersey, adequate notice of this work session regular meeting of the Franklin Township Council was made by the posting on the bulletin board in the municipal building and township website electronically transmitted to the officially designated newspapers, indicating that this work session regular meeting would take place in the municipal building. Thank you. If we could all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and then remain standing for Councilwoman Kimberly Francois's invocation. Here our supplications and through thy infinite love and mercy graciously grant us the strength and power in our thoughts and decisions to be for the benefit of all people at all times. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Councilman Inverrison. Councilwoman Francois here. Mayor Kramer. Councilman Oni Jaka. Councilmember Patazni. Deputy Mayor Pruitt. Councilwoman Edine. Here. Councilman Vassanova. Here. Councilman Wright. We are on to item number five. There are copies of the agenda over there near the clerk and copies of all the ordinances. We have none. Item number six is public discussion. Do we have a motion to open to the public? Second. Moved in second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. We are open to the public. Anyone wishing to speak on matters of government may come to the microphone. You may only speak once, no yielding of time. Please state your name and address. And I specifically would like to read from uh page um 23 with regards to overburdened uh communities. Now everybody or or at least several people in this room, including the council, are aware of the fact uh that according to the Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Environmental Uh Justice, uh Franklin Township is on a list that they have compiled of overburdened uh communities. And uh that list, the criteria to to be on that list is that uh a significant percentage of the population has to be um below the poverty line. Uh they have to be um uh uh uh I believe uh they have to uh also be, yeah, uh here it is low income, sorry, minority or limited English speaking uh populations. Uh the Office of Environmental Justice has come up with uh eight uh particular types of facilities that are not permitted in these overburdened uh communities. Um and now I'm reading from page 23 now warehouses specifically, which is our problem here in Franklin Township and more particularly in Canal Walk, where I live and many of the people here live, is warehouses. Um the last paragraph on page 23 of the New Jersey State Planning Commission Office of Planning Advocacy reads with reference to overburdened communities. While warehouses are not included in the list of eight types of facilities specified under the law, um a warehouse is not in and of itself a producer of pollution. There is no denying that warehouse operations serve to increase track traffic volume. This increased traffic volume increases mobile sources of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions when they are located near communities already disproportionately impacted by by environmental harms and risks. Recognizing these and other public health stressors, municipalities whose overburdened with overburdened communities should at a minimum consider zoning changes as part of a master plan re-examination process to exclude certain types of distribution warehouse facilities, parentheses, for example, above 75,000 to 100,000 square feet, including those above three stories. Now I'm sure the council is aware that the planning commission's document is a state guideline. It is not a law. But it has a guideline a certain significance for municipalities, despite home rule, the state is moving clearly in by establishing the Office of Environmental Justice and by approving and adopting this document is moving in the direction of trying to protect overburdened communities like Franklin from an excessive number of warehouses, especially those that are most commonly in what we see being built in our community over 100 square feet by and large, and over three stories. So for example, the warehouses that are proposed in the two applications for uh schoolhouse metlers and the recent application for the 600,000 square foot uh warehouse uh immediately adjacent to these warehouses on Mettlers and Weston in the uh former in the current horse farm exceed these criteria. So as a member of the warehouse action citizens warehouse action group, I would like to request that this council stops any further building of warehouses until uh local ordinance is adopted to examine what is the impact of these humongous warehouses that we see in our part of Franklin Township. Thank you, your time is up, and how it affects the different groups in our township. Thank you very much. And sometimes the uh procedure rules are a little different. I have a comment and a question.