Borough Council Rethinks COAH Decision

The Chester Borough Council is rethinking its previous decisions regarding affordable housing in the borough.

This development comes following the discovery that one of the properties decided upon for affordable housing at the council’s May 15 meeting, located at 275 Main St., is currently ineligible for affordable housing development.

“The (property owner) we were talking to doesn’t own the property,” said Borough Attorney Brian Mason. “It’s a short sale; the person has a bid in, but does not have a contract and may never have a contract to purchase that property.”

Mason indicated that inquiries were also made as to other properties owned by the same individual, but stated that they are to be ruled out due to various violations.

“Discussions that I had relative to 275 Main St. rapidly moved from that one to properties that had violations on it,” Mason said. “We’re not interested in dealing with property that has violations until those violations are fixed.”

With that, the other two previously approved properties the development of affordable housing—located at 235 and 310 Rt. 206, respectively—are still eligible for development. However, the exclusion of the third property put every property into question.

This also brings 300 Main St., which was rejected by the council at the previous meeting for affordable housing development, back into the conversation. When Councilman Tim Iversen made a motion on Monday night to look at alternatives to replace the 275 Main St. property, he notably excluded 300 Main St. from the motion. This proved to be a controversial choice with other council members, including fellow Councilman Gary Marshuetz.

“I’m not going to support Tim’s motion, because if you’re going to look at the picture, you’ve got to look at the whole picture,” Marshuetz said.

Marshuetz even suggested that the council looks at cancelling the proposed housing units at 310 Rt. 206 and allocating the funds saved to purchasing and deed restricting one acre 300 Main St. for no more than eight affordable housing units.

This idea also met resistance from council members who did not want to see a buildable property go to waste.

“I think (the Rt. 206 properties) are two properties that wouldn’t be used well otherwise, which is why I think they’re a good fit (for affordable housing),” said Councilwoman Jennifer Cooper-Napolitano.

Others, however, were in favor of Marshuetz’s idea, citing that the borough would get the most bang for its buck by placing a cluster of affordable housing units on the property at 300 Main St.

“I feel strongly that the amount of money divided by the number of units is what we should be trying to maximize here,” said Councilman Jim Robshaw.

In the end, the council deferred by a 3-2 margin to Borough Planner David Banisch, who will come back to the council with a recommendation on how to best allocate the $822,000 it has to spend on affordable housing at its next meeting on June 26th. Of that money, the borough has $261,000 still undedicated to affordable housing projects. The purchase of an acre of undeveloped property at 300 Main St., the borough would have to spend $275,000.

Regardless of what it decides to do, Banisch urged that the borough finds a place to allocate its affordable housing funds by July 17. That is the state-imposed deadline for allocation of these funds. If the borough fails to dedicate the funding to a particular project by that point, it risks losing the money back to the state.

Banisch urged that a resolution could be reached quickly, and that the borough could begin projects and collect revenue off of construction and other associated fees, as long as the council could agree on a swift solution pertaining to how to best allocate its affordable housing funds.

“I think we’re trying to plan this on the dollars and cents of it when we can really move some money around in the budget,” Banisch said. “Plus, we have the luxury of writing a spending plan that will anticipate future collections.”

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