Elk Township is reexamining its master plan
before a December hearing

Elk Township's Combined Planning and Zoning Board met on July 15 and heard, under correspondence, that the township has a master plan reexamination in front of it. Board Engineer Steve Bach told the board the reexamination has to be done by the end of this year, that it will run over the next few months, and that it culminates on December 16 with a public hearing to adopt the Master Plan Reexamination Report. Between now and then, the minutes say, there will be a workshop on the master plan at the end of each planning and zoning meeting.

A master plan is the document a township writes about what it wants its land to be, and a reexamination report is the township looking at that document again and saying what still holds. It is not a rezoning by itself. What makes it worth a landowner's attention in Gloucester County is the order of events: the workshops come first, the hearing to adopt the report comes after them, and both are public. The minutes do not say what the report will recommend, and nothing here guesses at it.

The same meeting carried the board's regular work. It adopted resolutions approving two minor subdivisions, one at 244 Clayton Avenue, shown on the tax maps as Block 186 Lot 1, which also carried a use variance, and one at 925 Aura Road, shown as Block 55 Lot 8. Both votes were recorded as approved unanimously, with five members voting yes and one abstaining on each. Adopting the resolution is the step that puts an approval in writing after the board has decided it.

A third item did not get that far. A major site plan application for a fence company at 541 Bridgeton Pike, Block 6 Lot 32, came before the board for completeness only, and the board voted to deem the application incomplete. That is a paperwork stage rather than a decision on the plan, and the applicant can come back once the file is filled in.

None of the three tells you much on its own. Together with the reexamination, they describe a small township with land still in play and a planning review already scheduled. Elk Township runs from Aura and Ferrell across to the Route 55 corridor, and most of what changes hands there is ground rather than finished houses. The meeting ran twenty three minutes. The December hearing is the one on the calendar.

A reexamination report is a review of the township's planning documents, not a rezoning. What it will recommend had not been published when this was written, and a public hearing can change what a board adopts. Written by Justin Kelly, NJ Real Estate Broker-Salesperson, from the Elk Township Planning and Zoning Board minutes.