If for some reason a Township of West Milford official has verified that a piece of property has a zoning violation that needs to be corrected, what does the property owner(s) do?
Naturally, they first find out details about the violation and then prepare to correct it.
Up until now rules for different violations have had different time periods for property owners to make required corrections to bring them into compliance with the law. What has been different is the amount of time provided for that action depending on what the violation is.
In the future the time limit for action to correct all illegal situations will be 20 days if an ordinance proposed by the council is adopted before the end of the year.
The ordinance was scheduled to be introduced at a council meeting earlier this week. The date for a second reading and vote on whether to adopt the ordinance was to be set at the meeting.
After a review of the existing township code the local governing body decided that the current different time amounts to allow corrections of various zoning violations is confusing and that a change to uniformity was needed.
Seeking a standardization of time for action will allow conformity between different code sections and establish fairness and predictabilty, the ordinance states. It will be better in allowing enforcement actions if they are deemed necessary, it says.
Provisions of the original required actions that are inconsistent with ordinance provisions will be repealed to the extent of their inconsistency
- Ann Genader