Round Four, Explained

Montgomery entered the cycle the way most towns did. It filed a declaratory-judgment action and joined the court-run Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program on January 29, 2025, under Docket No. SOM-L-153-25. A court order in late March 2025 set its obligations — a present need of 73 units and a prospective need of 260 units for 2025 to 2035. Township resolutions date that order inconsistently: the March 19, 2026 minutes say March 26, 2025; the June 18, 2026 minutes say March 27. This page covers the prospective need.

The round has a shape as well as a number. Compliance mechanisms are to be completed or underway by 2035, with a state midpoint review in 2030. The statutory deadline to adopt a Housing Element and Fair Share Plan was June 30, 2025; Montgomery's board adopted its first Fourth Round plan on June 26, four days inside it.

Amending a plan mid-round is not unusual and Montgomery has done it before: the Third Round plan was adopted in 2008 and amended in 2010, 2018 and 2020. The township cited that history when it amended the Fourth Round plan in 2026. Its stated reason was that circumstances had changed since June 2025 in a way that let it extend affordability controls on additional existing units, so it would remove some previously proposed inclusionary developments and prioritise preservation instead.

Affordable homes are not permanently affordable. Each one carries controls — recorded restrictions that cap what it can be rented or sold for and who may live in it — and those controls expire. When they lapse, the home joins the market and the town loses the credit. The amended plan works by paying to extend controls that were about to expire, on four existing developments, for another thirty years.

Preservation is not free. On November 13, 2025 the Township Committee introduced a $1.1 million bond ordinance, #25-1766, to fund the extensions — $1,100,000 in all, of which $650,000 comes from the township's COAH (affordable housing) trust fund and $450,000 is authorised as bonds or notes — and adopted the first resolutions extending controls, at McKinley Court and Montgomery Glen. It also ratified a settlement agreement the same night. The bond ordinance was finally adopted on December 4, 2025.

Three sites came out of the plan to make room for this approach: the E. Kahn site at 199 Grandview Road, 23 Orchard Road, and Thrive Assisted Living, whose credits were deferred to a future round.

A Master Plan does not change zoning

A Master Plan is a policy document: it says what the township intends. It does not by itself change what anyone may build. Zoning changes are a separate Township Committee process, with its own ordinance and its own public hearing. A housing element sits inside the Master Plan; the implementing ordinances that follow it are where the legal effect lives.

Montgomery's first Master Plan was adopted in 1971. The last reexamination was in 2017, and the Municipal Land Use Law requires one every ten years, so the next is due in 2027; the township said in February 2026 that the process was expected to begin that year and that it had won a significant planning grant to fund it.

Extending affordability controls

The controls on an affordable home are recorded restrictions with an end date. Extending them means persuading — and usually paying — the owner to accept a new, longer term, typically thirty years. The unit does not change; what changes is how long it stays affordable. Each extended unit counts toward the obligation, and the state allows additional bonus credits on top, which is how 210 units produce 275 credits.

The essential point, and the one that explains the last two years of Montgomery politics: where the units belong to a private landlord, an extension requires the owner's agreement. The township approached Pike Run's owner in 2025 and the owner did not agree; staff told the Planning Board that the recorded documents give the township no right to sue over an extension. Where the township already holds the deed restriction, as at McKinley Commons and Montgomery Glen, it extended the controls by resolution and used a $10,000 payment as the homeowner's incentive to sign.

A builder's remedy lawsuit

If a municipality has no court-approved plan for meeting its obligation, a developer can sue. If the developer wins, a court — not the township — can approve a project at a density the local zoning does not permit, usually in exchange for an affordable set-aside. The township loses the ability to say where and at what scale.

Immunity, and why it is the whole game

While a municipality is inside the court process with a plan in good standing, it is immune from those suits. Montgomery's immunity was extended by court order in early March 2026 to carry it through the amendment process, and the program judge recorded that but for time constraints the township seemingly had a compliant plan. Immunity is not permanent, though, and it is what the township attorney warned could be lost if no compliance hearing is held.

The 2030 midpoint review

A statutory checkpoint halfway through the round, at which a municipality must show it is on track. For Montgomery it doubles as the fallback date for the conditional McKinley extensions, whose controls run to 2032.

The order the steps come in

At the June 23, 2025 hearing, staff were asked about Pike Run directly. They said Pike Run has 210 affordable units with controls expiring inside the Fourth Round, that the township had approached the owner, and that the owner “were not able to agree to extend the controls.” Pike Run was therefore not in the 2025 plan, which leaned on the Kenvue site instead — though no one on the record put those two facts as cause and effect.

Pressed again at the June 26 continuation, staff added detail: because the units are rentals in single ownership, the owner has to be willing, and the owner was not; investors who put money into the property thirty years earlier expected their return to come when the units shifted to market rate, and the township had no legal means to compel an extension.

Five months later the position had changed. At the November 13, 2025 meeting the township attorney reported an agreement in principle with the owner of Pike Run, which the township was working to turn into a memorandum of understanding; the mayor thanked staff for a route that had been “getting harder because of not having the builder of Pike Run willing to work with us,” and described the prize: “if we can get all of these extensions, that means we do not need to have any construction.”

On December 4, 2025 the attorney put the same thing in its narrowest terms: no agreement had been executed, but there was an agreement in principle — a verbal agreement — for an extension of at least 96 units. That is the form it was still in when the township notified the court program and the parties, by letter, that it would amend its plan.

The public record does not explain why the owner's position changed. The adopted plan says only that the owner “had not previously expressed interest” and that discussions after the June 2025 adoption made the amendment possible. No meeting, minute or filing that this site has reviewed gives a reason. It is a genuine gap, and this page will not fill it with a guess. If the answer surfaces — in the settlement documents, at a compliance hearing, or from the owner — it belongs here.

Past plans, they said, had sometimes carried backup alternatives. This one did not: “we didn't have any backup alternatives for this plan.” The board would simply have to come back and amend.

The board planner then did the arithmetic aloud. Replacing the Kenvue site would require sites capable of about 706 units, because losing it meant losing three things at once: the affordable units built on the site, the bonus credits attached to it, and the off-site control extensions the developer was to have funded.

It is worth holding that number next to what actually happened. The replacement, when it came, required no new construction at all — the township said in November 2025 that if it could secure every extension it was chasing, no building would be needed. The 706-unit figure was an honest answer to the question as it was asked in June 2025; it was not a forecast, and it did not turn out to describe the path the township took.

The first mediation session with the court program was held on November 14, 2025. On December 4, 2025 the township attorney told the Committee that Montgomery had notified the program and the parties, by letter, that it would amend its plan. The amended plan was presented to the Planning Board at an information session on February 9, 2026, posted online on February 13, and carried into the Township Committee as an implementing ordinance on February 19. The Planning Board hearing noticed for February 23 was cancelled by a blizzard.

The court steps ran alongside. The program issued its decision on March 4, 2026 and the judge's order accepting it followed on March 5. The Planning Board held the public hearing and adopted the amended plan on March 9, 2026, and the Township Committee endorsed it by Resolution #26-3-113 on March 19. The filing deadline of March 15 was expected to slip: the township planned to ask the court for extra days under the blizzard emergency, noting it was far from the only town making that request.

The clearest evidence of the outcome is an absence. At the March 9 adoption hearing the Kenvue site is never named. It is simply not in the plan the board adopted. What has happened on the property since is the subject of our Kenvue explainer.

• The compliance hearing. Not scheduled. The judge has said he will not entertain one until the township has sat down with E. Kahn Development. Until it happens, the settlement is not final and immunity is contingent.
• The McKinley extensions. Conditional on discussions with the developer; the controls run to 2032, and the 2030 midpoint review is the fallback checkpoint.
• The 2030 midpoint review. The state checkpoint at which Montgomery must show it is on track.
• The 2027 Master Plan reexamination. Due under the Municipal Land Use Law, with the process expected to have begun in 2026.

All of this is decided in public meetings. The Township Committee generally meets on the first and third Thursday of the month; the Planning Board generally on the second and fourth Monday; the Zoning Board of Adjustment generally on the fourth Tuesday. All three move and skip meetings, so check the township's board meeting calendar before you go.