Court Opinion

ID: 9700349
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:22:56.818775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:07.717181
License: Public Domain

Hall, J.
(dissenting). I am convinced that the township zoning ordinance cannot bar the use of the property in question for a county vocational school and that the trial court was correct in granting a declaratory judgment to that effect. (While I agree with the strong intimation of the majority opinion that the township could be compelled to grant a use variance for the school, I do not think the county vocational school board should be required to go through the vagaries of that process.)
*152The context presents a classic case of conflict between a municipality acting parochially and a broader range governmental entity seeking to locate a concededly needed educational facility to serve the entire county.
The property involved goes much beyond the usual situation of vacant land. It is a 20 acre parcel upon which is situated a large modern building originally built by a utility and more recently used by a manufacturing company. It is ideally suited for a vocational school, containing much usable equipment and machinery (which would otherwise have to be purchased) and easily adaptable for educational purposes. The cost is about $1,000,000 less than the amount that would be required to erect and equip a new vocational school, without counting land cost. This sum would have to come from all the taxpayers of the county along with further assistance from state and federal coffers. Construction of a new building would require two years, thereby depriving interested residents of the entire county from vocational education for that period, as against the almost immediate use availability of the existing structure.
Prom a broad standpoint, the location could hardly be better, for it stands in the center of Morris County (population 383,454). Locally, it is situate in an industrial zone, which is a much more suitable area than a residential district for a vocational school with its accompanying machinery and considerable volume of traffic from students of secondary school age during the day and adult students in the evening, coming from all parts of the county. There is no suggestion that the school activity would exert any deleterious effect on neighboring properties that would require special conditions or buffers. Furthermore, the three industrial zones in Den-ville Township, comprising 12.40% of its 13 square mile area, do not represent densely settled, urban type manufacturing development. Rather there is little industry now in the zones and it is safe to assume that they were created with the hope that lightning might strike and some tax-wise profitable, campus-type industry of research might lo*153cate therein, as had occurred in neighboring municipalities. (The whole township is not built up, even with residential uses. While a portion might be classed as suburban in density, a considerable area remains practically rural.)
The municipal reaction to the vocational school board’s contract of purchase of the property had a very clear and typical purpose. The subsequent zoning ordinance amendment forbade all public and quasi-public institutional uses in industrial zones, except public utilities, while leaving them as special exceptions (permitted uses) in all other zones. As the trial court found, the action was directed toward the vocational school board’s proposed use of this property. It had nothing to do with any feeling that such a use does not belong in industrial zones. Erom what we were told at oral argument by counsel for the township, the primary purpose was unquestionably to keep this property— seemingly one of the largest tax ratables in the township— from becoming tax exempt as a county school. Thus once again the nature of local land use regulation is dictated by inappropriate parochial considerations arising from the state’s tax structure. (Although the zoning ordinance amendment is not directly attacked in this case as arbitrary, realistically the issue is substantially the same as if it were, as far as the vocational school use is concerned.)
To turn to the legal context, the total consequence is a fundamental conflict between the local interest of the taxpayers of Denville Township and the broader interest of the taxpayers of the whole county of Morris and, perhaps even more importantly, of that segment of the county population desirous of taking advantage of vocational education not now available. To me, the answer to the conflict has to be found in the field of state policy — primarily, policy to be gleaned from the state statues providing for county vocational institutions and indicating whose general welfare should be deemed paramount. See generally, Eeiler, “Metropolitanization and Land-Use Earochialism — Toward a Judicial Attitude,” 69 Mich. L. Rev. 655, 693-697 (1971)
*154Eirst, let me say that I do not conceive this case to be at all analogous to or governed by Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark v. Ho-Ho-Kus Borough, 42 N. J. 558 (1964), 47 N. J. 211 (1966). There the court was concerned with a private regional academic high school — a non-governmental institution — proposed to be constructed in the municipality’s finest residential area, and an enigmatic statute (N. J. S. A. 40 ¡55-33.1), which proscribed local zoning discrimination between public and non-profit private day schools. While, as I said at the time (47 N. J. at 219), the decisions were not sufficiently definitive in dealing with land use regulation of non-governmental regional institutions, at least the cases do stand for the proposition that, as a matter of legislative intent demonstrated by the statutory provision, traditional public day schools are subject to the local zoning power (and so are private schools on the same non-diseriminatory basis). The principal thesis to support the reasonableness of finding such an intent is found in this passage:
Here the prospect of discord is quite remote, for the school districts, whether regional or not, share a common interest with the municipalities themselves. Ordinarily there is no reason for a school board and the local governing body to quarrel about zoning matters. Hence, although unquestionably the school board as the State’s agent to discharge the State’s constitutional duty to provide for a system of free public schools * * * is a distinct entity essentially independent of the local governing body, * * * there is a community of interest which augurs for good relations between them. Of course the Legislature could place the public school beyond the zoning power as it is in some jurisdictions * * * but we see no constitutional command that it do so. (42 N. J. at 560-561).
It is obvious that the case before us is a very different one. We are dealing with government on both sides, but on different levels — one entirely local and the other county-wide ■—■ and conflict actually exists to the extent that the narrower seeks to bar the broader. It is impossible for me to find that N. J. 8. A. 40 ¡55-33.1 affords any indication of legislative intent to permit local zoning with respect to a county vocational school. The situation is rather akin to *155that in Hill v. Borough of Collingswood, 9 N. J. 369 (1952); Town of Bloomfield v. N. J. Highway Authority, 18 N. J. 237 (1955); Aviation Services, Inc. v. Board of Adjustment of Hanover Township, 20 N. J. 275 (1956); and Township of Washington, Bergen County v. Village of Ridgewood, 26 N. J. 578 (1958). In each of these cases it was held that the particular governmental activity or project involved was not subject to the zoning ordinance of the municipality in which it was situate. As was said in Ho-HoKus (42 N. J. at 560) with reference to the last three cases, this result was reached on the rationale that there was the likelihood of a conflict in interest that would defeat or hamper the project if the local zoning power were applicable and that the state policy, indicated by the particular authorizing statute in each case, demonstrated that the Legislature intended that the municipality in which the improvement was to be located should not be able to block it by zoning.
Hill involved commercial recreational activities in a county park located in a residential zone of the municipality in which the park was situate. Bloomfield concerned service areas of the Garden State Parkway similarly located. Aviation Services dealt with a municipal airport authorized by statute to be developed in another municipality and Washington Township with a municipal water storage tank, likewise authorized to be located outside the municipality that the facility served. Although the enabling legislation in each case was silent, as here, with respect to the applicability of local zoning ordinances, this court readily found in each instance, from the overall nature and purpose of the project and the comprehensive powers granted by the particular statute to the governmental entity involved (including especially the power of eminent domain), that local zoning regulation would be incongruous and could not be allowed to defeat or hinder effectuation of the broader policy and general welfare underlying the particular project.
To my mind, the same considerations are present in the case of county vocational schools and the result should be the *156same. Without reciting in detail the authority and powers granted by the enabling statute, N. J. 8. A. 18A:5A-11, et seq., the legislative scheme is plain to empower the creation of an autonomous body in each county to establish and operate county vocational schools for the benefit of all the people of the county, with full power to “[t]ake and condemn land and other property for school purposes” (N. J. 8. A. 18A:54^20(b)). As far as state policy and local zoning are concerned, I can see no legal difference between this scheme and a county park.
It seems to me that the result reached by the majority flies in the face of these prior decisions and their rationale, and is a step backward in the resolution of inter-governmental land use regulation conflicts.
I would affirm the judgment of the Law Division.
Justice Mountain joins in this opinion.
For reversal and remandment—Chief Justice Weintraub and Justices Jacobs, Francis, Proctor and Schettino—5.
For affirmance—Justices Hall and Mountain—2.