What ramifications do we have when we dont agree with the planning board

We have avacation home in Avon Nj that was destroyed on the first floor because of hurricane sandy. We have not been able to demolish and rebuild because we were educating our children, the house has a detached garage apartment and this was not effected by the storm. We have been to the planning board twice and it seems that they will not approve our petition to tear down and rebuild a house and have the garage apt. renovated on the outside... My question is what recourse do we have? Can we just seek approval for the house and forget the garage. It seems that the town wants us to tear down the garage apt. also, because they feel its too big, I do not want to do that because we renovated the inside apartment last year and spent 30,000. It seems ridiculous that we are being forced to do that and all we want to do is an improvement. I dont know what to do.