NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

PER CURIAM.

This appeal arises from a dispute over the interpretation of a local rent control ordinance which exempted certain rehabilitated apartments from rent control. Defendant, the Rent Leveling Board of West New York (Board), appeals from a June 21, 2013 order of the Law Division, enjoining enforcement of the Board's January 22, 2013 resolution and remanding the matter to the Board to determine the rents on twenty-one apartments in a building owned by plaintiff 6305 Boulevard East Associates. The order also reversed the Board's January 13, 2013 decision, and declared that the Board's November 15, 1984 resolution did not amend or repeal an earlier resolution, dated February 8, 1984, granting rent decontrol of all apartments that became vacant after plaintiff rehabilitated them. We conclude that the trial judge correctly interpreted the ordinance in his oral opinion issued on June 21, 2013, and we affirm.1

I

By way of background, West New York Ordinance 1550, adopted July 21, 1982, subjected apartments in the Township to rent control and provided that "no rent increases shall hereafter be demanded, paid or accepted, except as provided in this Ordinance." However, under Section 2(b)(5), the ordinance exempted "[p]remises which are substantially rehabilitated ... so as to qualify for a Certificate of Exemption for the initial rental only."2 To qualify for the exemption, the owner was required to spend "in excess of 50% of [the] market value of the building" on improvements primarily relating to the tenants' quality of life. West New York, N.J., Ordinance 1550, § 1 (j) (July 21, 1982) (Ordinance 1550). The ordinance also permitted an owner to substantially rehabilitate individual apartments, as opposed to an entire building. Ordinance 1550, § 9 (7).

Section 9 of Ordinance 1550, which is central to this appeal, provided:

The same section required the landlord to submit a written proposal to the Board before beginning rehabilitation work, and it permitted the Board or tenants to request a hearing before the work was performed "to determine whether said proposed rehabilitation qualifies for decontrol under this section." Ibid. (emphasis added). Thus, in exchange for a landlord making a substantial economic investment in improving a building, the ordinance exempted the rehabilitated building from rent control for the "initial" rental after the issuance of the Certificate of Exemption.

The Board construed an "initial" rental as meaning the first new rental after an apartment became vacant. Thus, after first approving plaintiff's 1983 rehabilitation application3, the Board then passed a Resolution dated February 8, 1984 finding that all requirements were met as to the ten apartments listed in the Resolution and granted Certifications of Exemption as to those apartments. There is no dispute on this record that the listed apartments were vacant. The Resolution further provided in Paragraph 6: "In the event of future vacancies at the subject premises, a Certificate of Exemption will be granted to such vacant apartments upon the receipt by the Secretary of proof of all being completed and proof of payment."

On November 8, 1984, the Board held a hearing on plaintiff's application to raise rents on occupied apartments that had been rehabilitated. In a November 15, 1984 Resolution, the Board found that all the requirements for substantial rehabilitation had been met with respect to those apartments. In Paragraph 5, the resolution set a rent schedule for those occupied apartments, to be applied from January 1, 1985 to December 31, 1988. Paragraph 5 further stated that there shall be no other rent increases during that time period, except if an apartment "becomes vacant before or during the pendency of these increases, landlord may raise the rent on said vacant apartment to market rent." Paragraph 5 provided that once the landlord raised the rent to a market level, any further increases would be subject to the rent control provisions of the ordinance.

Paragraph 6 addressed future rent increases for apartments that were occupied during 1985-1989 and continued to be occupied by the same tenants thereafter. This section provided that "On or after January 1, 1989, the rents above stated shall be subject to any and all increases allowed pursuant to the ordinance." In other words, after December 31, 1988 any rent increases above the amounts stated in the ordinance would be governed by the general limitations of the rent control ordinance.

The November resolution apparently resulted from an agreement between the landlord and the tenants. The Town Commissioners approved the Board's resolution in a Resolution dated December 3, 1984. The December 3 Resolution noted that both sides "have agreed to the terms of said rental increases" stated in the Board's resolution, and that the governing body was approving the agreement pursuant to the Rent Control Ordinance.4

There is no dispute that plaintiff completed the rehabilitation of the entire building. While plaintiff apparently failed to file certain registration statements between 1986 and 1987, the Board did not prosecute or fine plaintiff for those omissions, and the Board cites no authority for the imposition of any penalty for the failure to file, beyond the monetary fines specified in the Ordinance. According to plaintiff, beginning in 1992, it filed statements with the Board showing which apartments had become vacant and hence, subject to the one-time rent decontrol exception of Ordinance 1550.

At some point between the late 1980's and the year 2013, plaintiff purged its old rental files, including those for 1986 and 1987. However, plaintiff retained copies of its rent registration statements for twenty years, from 1992 to 2012. In 2012, a number of tenants filed complaints with the Board, alleging that plaintiff was charging illegally high rents. Due to plaintiff's inability to produce records from decades earlier, the Board determined that plaintiff had retroactively lost its right to charge market rents for the units and rolled back the rents to the rent-controlled levels permitted in the November 15, 1984 resolution, plus increases based on the Consumer Price Index in the succeeding years.

Plaintiff filed a verified complaint challenging the Board's decision. The trial judge initially decided that the November 15, 1984 resolution had placed time limits on plaintiff's right to raise the rents to market levels. However, on plaintiff's motion for reconsideration, the judge construed Section 9 of Ordinance 1550, which the parties had cited but not previously highlighted in their arguments. The judge noted that Section 9 set no time limits on a landlord's right to raise the rents on rehabilitated apartments. He therefore determined that the November 15, 1984 resolution could not have been intended to set a time limit on plaintiff's right to charge a market rate rental on the rehabilitated apartments, because setting such a time limit would contravene Section 9.

The judge further found that although plaintiff did not file vacancy statements during the period set forth in the November resolution, "it is undisputed that vacancy statements for all the apartments at issue were filed at later dates." The judge therefore concluded that plaintiff was "entitled to have the base rents for these apartments set as the market value at the time of the first vacancy registration statements filed for these apartments after the November 1984 resolution, even if the statements were filed after 1988."

The judge held "that the plaintiff was entitled to raise to market value the rents on all apartments in the subject premises provided that it properly filed vacancy registration statements and that plaintiff was not required to file such statements within the four year period provided by the November 1984 resolution." The court reversed the Board's decision of January 13, 2013, and remanded the matter to the Board to determine the applicable rents "in accordance with this ruling."

II

Like the trial court, we owe no deference to the Board's legal interpretations, including its construction of the Town rent control ordinance. See Schulmann Realty Group v. Hazlet Twp. Rent Control Bd., 290 N.J.Super. 176, 184 (App. Div. 1996). We construe an ordinance using the same rules of construction applied in interpreting a statute, applying its plain meaning if the terms are unambiguous. AMN, Inc., of New Jersey v. Twp. of South Brunswick Rent Leveling Bd., 93 N.J. 518, 524-25 (1983). In case of ambiguity, we construe the enactment in a way that is consistent with its purpose. Id. at 525.

It is well understood that a rent control board is bound to strictly follow the rent control ordinance. Schulmann Realty Group, supra, at 183. Since the Board's powers derive from the ordinance, it has no authority to pass resolutions that contravene the ordinance. Ibid.; see also Knight v. City of Hoboken Rent Leveling & Stab. Bd., 332 N.J.Super. 547, 551 (App. Div. 2000).

In a somewhat convoluted brief, the Board first claims that the November resolution purported to set the "fair market rents" for the rehabilitated apartments. In a later section of its brief, it asserts that the November resolution set the allowable rents for occupied but rehabilitated apartments; in that context, the Board argues that "the only way the plaintiff could have charged fair market value rents pursuant to the November 1984 Resolution was if the tenants at the designated apartments vacated."

The Board also argues, as it did in the trial court, that the November resolution set a four-year time limit (1985-88) on the landlord's authority to raise the rents on rehabilitated apartments to market levels. The Board further contends that because plaintiff did not register any vacancies in 1985 and 1986, did not file registration statements for the rehabilitated apartments for 1987 and 1988, and did not report any vacancies until 1992, all future rent increases must be calculated based on the rent levels set in the November ordinance.

The issues, as framed in this appeal, are whether the November resolution set fair market rent levels or only set permissible rent increases for occupied but rehabilitated apartments, and whether the Board was authorized to limit the decontrol of the apartments to the time frames stated in the November resolution. We construe the November resolution as setting allowable rent levels for occupied apartments that had not been vacated since those apartments were rehabilitated. It appears from the wording of Ordinance 1550 that the landlord could have insisted on charging a market rent immediately following the completion of the rehabilitation work on each apartment, or at least at the end of the lease for each such apartment. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to give existing tenants the right to challenge a landlord's application for the Board's approval of a rehabilitation project. However, as indicated in the Town's December 3, 1984 Resolution, plaintiff reached a compromise with its existing tenants and agreed to put off raising rents to market levels until the apartments became vacant.

To the extent that either the Board or the tenants argue that the Board's November resolution set a time limit on rent decontrol of the rehabilitated apartments, we cannot agree. The Ordinance clearly grants a landlord the right to a one-time exemption from rent control, in setting the rent for a rehabilitated apartment. The clear purpose of the exemption is to provide a financial motivation for landlords to improve their residential rental properties. Setting a time limit on that right would defeat the purpose of the ordinance and create a motivation for landlords to force out existing tenants. Therefore, a Board resolution setting a time limit would be ultra vires. Reading the Board's February and November resolutions together, we agree with the trial court that the November 15, 1984 resolution did not amend or repeal the February 8, 1984 resolution granting a one-time rent decontrol of all vacant rehabilitated apartments. We also agree that the Board's interpretation of the November resolution would be ultra vires. Therefore we affirm the trial court's order.

We note but do not decide an argument raised by the tenants-intervenors. They contend that plaintiff overstated the base market rents by giving tenants leases that listed a high "base rent" with a substantial rent abatement. They contend that when plaintiff subsequently sought a rent increase, the increase was based on the base rent listed in the lease, rather than on the actual rent the tenant had been paying. This issue was not decided by the trial court, or by the Board, and we will not address it for the first time on appeal. The trial court remanded to the Board the issue of calculation of the rents. The tenants may raise that issue on remand. We intimate no view as to the merits of the argument.5

Affirmed.