Three neighbors stood up in support. The board denied the fence anyway, 9-0. That's what happened last November when a homeowner at 441 Ellis Place tried to keep an unpermitted six-foot privacy fence he'd already built — and it happened at the Planning Board, not the board most residents would guess handles fences. [1]

The case is a clean entry point into a distinction that trips up a lot of people who've never had to deal with it: Wyckoff has two separate land-use boards, the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Adjustment, and which one hears your case depends on rules that aren't always intuitive. The basic split: if someone wants to build something new, subdivide a lot, or put up a store, office, or restaurant, that goes to the Planning Board. If a homeowner wants an exception to the zoning code on a lot that already exists — a shed too close to the property line, a pool that doesn't meet setback rules, an addition on an undersized lot — that's the Zoning Board of Adjustment, generally called the ZBA. [2][3]

Here's the twist: in Wyckoff, front-yard fences don't follow that pattern. A front-yard fence over four feet, or more than half solid, needs a variance from the Planning Board — not the ZBA. Corner-lot fences have an added rule: nothing within 25 feet of the corner where the two streets meet. [4] It's exactly the kind of local wrinkle that sends residents to the wrong office, and it's now the subject of active litigation: Fox has since sued the Planning Board over the denial in Bergen County Superior Court, arguing in part that the board never had jurisdiction to hear the case at all — a jurisdictional dispute that turns on precisely the board-vs-board confusion this piece is about. (See our earlier coverage: "Fox Sues Wyckoff Planning Board Over Fence Denial.")

Not every fence ends in court. Compare Fox's case to what happened a mile away on Hurley Avenue. A Hurley Avenue homeowner's property fronts on both Hurley Avenue and Van Schaik Lane, and even though the case caption lists Van Schaik as the rear, the fence the homeowner wanted to build there triggered the same front-yard rule — the same corner-lot wrinkle that put Fox's case in front of the Planning Board in the first place. The homeowner wanted a six-foot solid vinyl fence along Van Schaik, well over the four-foot limit the ordinance allows in a front yard — the same basic type of variance request Fox's fence would have needed, had he asked for it before building. [7]

But this homeowner asked before building, and the board treated it as a negotiation, not a verdict. Chairman Rob Fortunato explained that the township generally discourages long runs of solid six-foot fences, especially along visible street frontages, because they create a harsh visual barrier — arguably the same instinct that led the board to deny Fox. Rather than issue a denial, though, board members went back and forth with the homeowner on how to make the fence work. Board member Joe Vander Plaat suggested aluminum or a lattice-top vinyl style in a less stark color than white; the homeowner held firm on wanting a solid fence, both for privacy and to keep deer from seeing into the yard, and noted that many neighboring properties already had white fencing. Fellow board member Michael Todé pushed for a uniform lattice-top style around the entire property rather than solid on some sides and decorative on others, and separately warned that the arborvitae the homeowner had proposed for screening are a favorite deer snack, steering him toward Norway or Serbian spruce instead. [5]

The board settled on a compromise: lattice-top vinyl uniformly around the property, evergreen screening using either arborvitae or one of the deer-resistant spruce alternatives, and an irrigation system to keep the plantings alive — approved unanimously on January 14, 2026, and formally memorialized the following month. [5][6]

The rule that governed both cases was identical. What differed was the sequence: Fox built first and asked later, and the board's questions came wrapped in a violation notice and eight months of enforcement. The Hurley Avenue homeowner asked first, and the same questions came wrapped in a planting plan. If there's a single practical takeaway from Wyckoff's fence rule, it's that one: whichever board technically has your case, get there before the fence goes up, not after.

This is the first in The Fine Print, an occasional series on the parts of Wyckoff's local government that don't work quite the way you'd expect. Next: how the Planning Board decided a shopping-center retail pad could take four years to approve, and what the Zoning Board of Adjustment's docket looks like on an ordinary month — sheds, pools, and the rare case big enough to need five votes instead of a simple majority.