MERCER COUNTY: Municipalities to share costs of legal fees in affordable housing trial

By Frank Mustac, Contributor
Several municipalities in Mercer County, including the Hopewell Township, are collectively paying for legal fees for their joint affordable housing trial., Hopewell Township is currently in Superior Court along with the other towns known as Mercer County Municipal Group (MCMG) to determine the number of low- and moderate-income housing units that should be built to meet each municipality’s legal obligations., The towns are contracting with “Jeffrey R. Surenian and Associates and The Buzak Law Group, LLC for Special Counsel to represent the collective interests of the MCMG in the trial,” according to a resolution passed by the Hopewell Township Committee recently., The estimated cost of the contract is “$25,000.00 for Special Counsel to represent the collective interests of the MCMG in the trial.”, Another $25,000 will go towards a contract with “Econsult Solutions for representation of the collective interests of the MCMG in the trial on fair share methodological issues,” according to language in the Hopewell Township resolution., In 2015, Econsult Solutions Inc. of Philadelphia was commissioned by a consortium of more than 100 municipalities in New Jersey, including Hopewell Township, to prepare a study to calculate the number of affordable housing units each town in the consortium is legally obliged to provide as determined by firm’s experts., The number for Hopewell Township calculated by Econsult is 784, according to the study report dated Dec. 30, 2015 and available on New Jersey League of Municipalities website., “All of the Mercer County towns that are going into litigation that have not settled yet have agreed that they would have sort of one legal team,” said Paul Pogorzelski at a recent Hopewell Township Committee meeting., Michael Herbert, the township’s attorney, said the legal firms that will representing the Mercer County municipalities also represented municipalities in Ocean County in the same type of affordable housing trial there., “They were about three-quarters of the way through the trial down in in Ocean County before all the towns settled,” Mr. Herbert said. “So a lot of the work was already done in Ocean County. It ends up saving Hopewell Township and the other towns involved money as far as the litigation costs.”, The Mercer County trial is slated to begin this month before Judge Mary Jacobson.