The Villadom Times Weekly Newspaper Online-Aug 18, 2010 Issue

August 18, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 5 Mahwah Board of adjustment denies Stag Hill fowl claim by Frank J. McMahon The Mahwah Zoning Board of Adjustment has denied a contention by Stag Hill property owner Rommel Mondejar and his tenant, Jonathan DeMarino, that they are not required to keep their chicken coops beyond a ﬁve-foot setback from the property line. Mondejar and DeMarino claimed that chickens and roosters have been raised on their property prior to the township’s adoption of its zoning ordinance in 1946. Mondejar and DeMarino applied to the zoning board for an interpretation of the township’s zoning ordinance after being in municipal court on several occasions in response to summonses issued by the township’s previous property maintenance ofﬁcer, John Lane, and by Thomas Mulvey, the current zoning and property maintenance inspector. Summonses were issued in response to complaints by neighbors. The summonses cited the owner and tenant for violating township ordinances, including the operation of a home occupancy business contrary to a township ordinance, the outside sale of goods and poultry contrary to a township ordinance, using residential property for an agricultural purpose, and for having chicken coops too close to their property line. DeMarino allegedly has hundreds of roosters and hens in multiple coops on his property, some of which are currently within ﬁve feet of the property line. He claims his use of the property for raising chickens and roosters for his family predates the 1946 effective date of the township’s zoning ordinance. The ﬁve eligible members of the zoning board recently voted to deny that claim by DeMarino for two reasons. First, neither applicant nor their attorney, George Cotz, attended the most recently scheduled public hearing of their application, and they had not provided the board with any extension of time to make a determination in the matter, which is required by the municipal land use law. Second, board member William Dator, who made the motion to deny the application, explained that they had failed to prove their property had been continuously occupied by residents who had raised chickens there prior to 1946. Dator further explained that the property in question was undeveloped in 1945, and Zoning Board Attorney Ben Cascio explained that it was incumbent upon Mondejar and DeMarino to show that their property was used for the raising of chickens and that the use remained without interruption since 1945. At a previous meeting of the board, Dator brought an old property assessment map to its attention and claimed that, according to that old tax assessment map, the house on Mondejar’s lot did not exist in 1946 when the zoning ordinance was adopted. He also claimed that the larger piece of property that included Mondejar’s lot was not subdivided until 1950, after the zoning ordinance was in effect. Dator concluded that proved there were no chickens on that property in 1946. But Cotz disagreed and claimed that chickens were kept on the property well before 1946, and that coops were there before World War I. Cotz had previously brought in several residents of the area to testify about chickens on the property before 1946, but they did not convince the board. When he asked for several postponements of the hearing, and then did not attend the latest scheduled hearing, the board decided to act on the application. Prior to the board’s vote to deny the application, Steve Lydon from the township’s professional planner’s ofﬁce testiﬁed that there were no drawings to show the location of the chicken coops on the Mondejar/DeMarino property, so the board could not ﬁnd they were in a lawful location. In addition, he told the board that the township’s ordinance requires a certiﬁcate of occupancy on buildings or structures on a property, but Mondejar and DeMarino never demonstrated they had any certiﬁcates of occupancy for the buildings or structures on their property. Mondejar and DeMarino must now return to Municipal Court Judge Anthony Gianni to answer the summonses, which are have been held in abeyance pending the zoning board’s decision on this application. 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