What is the State Development and Redevelopment Plan (State Plan)?
Who is the Office of Planning Advocacy (OPA)?
What is Cross-acceptance?
This is a process of comparing statewide planning policies at government levels with the purpose of a high level of consistency among municipal, county, regional, and State plans as well as the State Plan.
Through this process, the various stakeholders are able to partner to create a more meaningful and viable State Plan. To accomplish this, municipal, county, and regional master plans must be coordinated regionally with each “local vision” of growth and the community taken into consideration during the process. - OPA
Public Comments
If you would like to submit a public comment on the draft State Plan you may submit commits via the OPA website, email stateplan.comments@sos.nj.gov, or submit to the Morris County Office of Planning and Preservation via email:stateplan@co.morris.nj.us. Please include your name/affiliation (if appropriate) and full address to submit a comment.
As part of the State Plan’s Cross-acceptance process regional entities (counties, Highlands, or the State) serve in the role as the Negotiating Entity (NE) between the municipalities and State of New Jersey.
Negotiating Entities (NE) serve as a go between, between OPA and municipalities. Their role is to assist municipalities with the requirements for the State Plan and provide this information to OPA for their review.
Negotiating Entities: have until Winter 2024/2025 to accept their role as Negotiating Entity for their respective counties/regions. If counties are unable to fulfill this role the OPA (Office of Planning Advocacy) will seek to assign another regional entity, or OPA could assume the responsibility themselves. Since Morris County is in the Highlands Region, the Highlands Council(PDF, 196KB) will serve as the NE for the 32 municipalities in the Highlands unless the municipalities request a waiver from OPA to have another entity serve in this role. Four municipalities have been approved and are now covered by the County.
The seven (7) municipalities not in the Highlands Region would fall to the County of Morris to be their NE. These seven municipalities are: Lincoln Park, Madison, East Hanover, Chatham Boro, Chatham Twp, Long Hill and Florham Park. In addition, Pequannock, Morris Plains, Morris Township and Randolph are also be covered by Morris County. These 11 municipalities will have the County as their NE. The other 28 Morris County municipalities will be covered by the Highlands Council.
Municipalities that choose to participate in this process review their master plans and complete the Cross Acceptance Response Template (CART): https://www.publicinput.com/Customer/File/Full/8e06a06e-3814-4adf-8a2e-0e5219a6bbaf
If needed, municipalities can work with their NE to complete the CART and make any updates to the State Plan Zones in their municipality via the Survey123 Form (no ESRI account will be needed to complete the form).
In addition, OPA/Rowan has set up Mapping Tools: one called the State Plan Update Viewer (https://njmap2.com/sdrp/stateplan) to help municipalities review the existing State Plan zones and planning information to assist in developing their CARTs. They also developed a NJ Smart Growth Explorer – Beta tool. This is another interactive map where users may explore area in NJ from statewide to block/lot to help understand existing data and information that may inform better decision making at the local level. This tool is not part of the State Plan policy map.
Once a municipality completes its CART, it submits it to the NE as per the timeline defined by the NE and OPA. The 11 Morris County Municipalities that have the County as their NE need to submit to the County by March 31, 2025.
NEXT STEPS:
- Morris County summarizes all the CARTs including the County CART and submits to OPA.
- OPA reviews CART summary documents
- Negotiating Phase begins between OPA and NEs
- OPA’s goal is to have the new State Plan adopted by the end of 2025
- Implementation to occur in 2026