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A summer resident of a campground in Upper Township said a tornado passed close to his property in 2020. He said changes will keep owners from making their properties safer, but township officials say they want to clarify the rules and make sure they do not become year-round homes. Township Committee approved an ordinance on Monday.
UPPER TOWNSHIP – A popular upgrade to summer homes in the campgrounds in Upper Township will no longer be allowed under an ordinance approved Monday.
The ordinance establishes rules for the 11 campgrounds in the township, including those where the trailers are placed on foundations and are typically never moved. Part of the reason for the ordinance is to head off the possibility of people living in the properties year-round, which could then mean additional children in the local school district.
The tax revenue raised from one of the properties would not come close to the expense of educating a child, Paul Dietrich, the township engineer, said at the meeting. He said there are apartments, housing developments and year-round mobile home parks in the township, but the campgrounds were not established as year-round homes.
Summertime residents of some of campgrounds told members of Township Committee that no one planned to live in the properties all year. In fact, in most instances, power and other utilities were shut off at the end of the season, several speakers said.
Courts have found that children have a right to an education, even if their parents are staying somewhere without legal authorization.
The new ordinance covers several areas, but the one that drew the most response was a specific prohibit against adding a roof to a trailer home. Known as a roof-over, the work usually costs a few thousand dollars and can extend the life of a mobile home and add insulation.
Committee members said the improvement has not been allowed since an ordinance approved in 1964. But a previous construction officer issued numerous building permits for roof-over projects over the course of several years.
Township attorney Daniel Reeves said the township does not want to punish those owners, who acting in good faith, but wants to stop the practice.
Several summer residents spoke against the change, suggesting that the projects did no harm and improved their communities. They could also be safer, said a resident of Bayberry Cove for 11 years. He described getting the warning of a tornado two years ago, which passed close to his property.
He described hearing a warning on his phone to seek shelter, saying there is nowhere to seek shelter in the mobile homes.
“There’s no basement to go to,” he said. “The only thing that makes them more structurally sound is a roof-over.”
Also, the flat roofs on a trailer only last about 15 years, while a pitched roof-over with asphalt shingles can last 30 years, he said.
At the meeting, Dietrich said some campgrounds would not allow homes over a certain age. While the structures may not be going anywhere, Dietrich said they were legally recreational vehicles, not mobile homes.
“These are campgrounds. These are for recreational vehicles. We have a mobile home park that’s directly across the street from you,” Dietrich said.
“The more habitable these units become, the greater the risk of someone illegally, improperly attempting to use one of these recreational vehicles as a year-round residence,” Reeves said. “From a health-code standpoint, they’re not designed for that, and from an education and school funding standpoint, it creates significant funding liability for the township if individuals start residing in the campgrounds and sending their children to the schools.”
While they are called campgrounds, you won’t find tents and very few campfires. In many of the campgrounds, the roads are paved and the owners spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their properties, which often include attached decks and other amenities.
“Nobody’s going to back a trailer up to it and pull it out at night. It just ain’t happening,” said David Kruczek , the president of the Manufactured Homeowners Association of New Jersey, who spoke to committee on another matter.
Attorney Ray Went spoke on behalf of the condominium associations of two campgrounds, Bayberry Cove and Oak Ridge, which stand on either side of Route 9. In these, the owner of the mobile home also owns the land under it.
Went said he worked with the township on the ordinance for months, trying to hammer out an agreement. There remains one area where his clients and others appealed for a change, a limit to the size of doorways connecting the mobile homes to additions such as screened-in porches to no more than six feet wide.
Members of committee said the owners could seek a variance if they needed an exception, but were not willing to amend a recommendation from the Planning Board.
Another change in the ordinance moved a section on primitive campsites to a different part of the ordinance. They are designed for tents or possibly a camper van. Those sites do not offer utility connections or other amenities and are more typical of the sites offered at state forests.
They also do not exist in Upper Township. None of the commercial campgrounds in the township offer primitive campsites.
Mayor Curtis Corson and Committee member Jay Newman stepped down for the discussion because of conflicts of interest. Corson owns a campground, while a relative of Newman’s worked building roof-overs before Newman was elected last year. That left three of the five members of committee to vote. All three supported the ordinance.
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A summer resident of a campground in Upper Township said a tornado passed close to his property in 2020. He said changes will keep owners from making their properties safer, but township officials say they want to clarify the rules and make sure they do not become year-round homes. Township Committee approved an ordinance on Monday.
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