JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NJ – Jackson Township Council President Steven Chisolm said the township will be looking into an obscure ordinance that prohibits commercial vehicles from being stored or parked in residential neighborhoods.
Chisolm’s statement was in response to a concerned resident who said in her neighborhood, people park on the grass and have commercial vehicles on residential propertiers.
“I’m asking you to please consider creating an ordinance that will eliminate parking on lawns,” Jackson resident Jennifer Cusanelli said. “We’re having a lot of rental properties where the people renting them own businesses, landscaping businesses, what have you. There’s a lot of big equipment being parked on front [and back] lawns.”
Cusanelli reminded the council that most residents in town have well water and is concerned about harmful material seeping into the groundwater.
“It’s been an issue for years now and it’s becoming beyond a nuisance,” she said, begging the council to act on the matter.
Councilman Stephen Chisolm referred to an ordinance that has long been on the books in Jackson that prohibits any commercial vehicles from being parked overnight on residential properties.
The township code states that, “No person, firm or corporation shall park or store, between the hours of 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., a motor-drawn vehicle, omnibus, school bus, pole trailer, road tractor or commercial motor vehicle upon any land, property or lot which is primarily used or zoned for residential purposes. The words and phrases stated and used in this section are intended to have the meanings set forth for such words and phrases respectively as set forth in Subtitle 1 of Title 39 of the New Jersey Revised Statutes.”
“We are looking at other parking ordinances, as far as parking a car on the lawn, I don’t know how you control that. If you don’t have space parking on grass is not really [unintelligible],” Chisolm replied. “However, commercial vehicles in a non-commercial area, that is something that could be looked into a little bit more.”
Under that law, small business owners could be fined up to $2,000 per violation.
Mayor Michael Reina said today that he does see a problem with business owners parking large trucks in commercial neighborhoods, but he would stop short of a new ordinance that would prohibit blue-collar small business owners from parking their work trucks in their driveways at night.
“I’m not going to go after hard-working blue-collar workers,” Reina said. “To say that we would ticket electricians, plumbers, painters, and other small business owners, I would veto that ordinance if it came to my desk.”
Reina pointed out that the current ordinance on the books prohibits commercial parking, but allows for parking of commercial trucks under six tons on a business owner’s own residential property.
He said, ordinance 244-170, while prohibiting large commercial vehicles does allow for small vans, pickup trucks and other utility vehicles of a gross weight of six tons or less. He also noted that during active construction, larger vehicles are allowed to be stored during the duration of the construction project.
Under Jackson’s ordinance, cargo vans, SUVs, full-sized pickup trucks, box trucks, heavy-duty pickups, and most full-sized vans fall under the 6-ton limit.
Rack trucks, school buses, buses, beverage trucks, refuse and other large commercial vehicles are prohibited.
Reina said he would not consider expanding that law, which is standard through much of New Jersey because of the burdens it would place on small blue-collar business owners.