Dear EHOA

As debate rages about the Englewood re-development scheme envisioned by the City Council, it seems the council keeps changing its reasons for wanting to saddle the community with an enormously dense project.

Originally, the mayor and council justified the destruction of a vibrant industrial area by claiming that the project would dramatically increase tax revenues. Upon closer inspection, it was learned that the tax argument is based on a lot of wishful thinking and not on reality. The cost of added police, firefighters, ambulance corps, and Department of Public Works employees and equipment as well as infrastructure expenses would cut into any real tax advantage. In addition, there is no guarantee that the project would be fully complete and occupied and, therefore, may never reach its full tax potential.

The council’s next strategy was to say that the city needed to knock down existing structures to conduct an environmental cleanup on a small portion of the site. It was again an argument the council could not substantiate because whatever pollution is on the site is not major and threatens no one. The Sierra Club Web site lists various pollution hot spots in Bergen County: None of them is in Englewood.

I suspect both the tax and environmental arguments are smoke screens for why the city really wants to do this project - which is to reward a couple of developers who are major campaign donors to federal, state, and local candidates. Donations I have uncovered by developers S. Hekemian and the Kasparian family - the proposed project’s developers - to the local and state total tens of thousands of dollars (and can be easily verified). Additionally, one of the attorneys for the developers is Joseph Ferriero - the Bergen County Democratic chairman - whose firm stands to take a tidy sum representing the developers of the project.

This life-altering project is apparently being rammed down the throats of the people of Englewood for the political benefit of the dominant party in town. There is no advantage to the city whatsoever in destroying existing businesses that have been there for 50 years and attracting more traffic and car and truck exhaust pollution from more than 9,000 vehicles a day.

If this is such a great project, why doesn’t the City Council delay taking official action on it until the residents have an opportunity to carefully review this plan and other proposals that were originally submitted?

Sincerely,

Norman Gorlyn

(This letter first appeared in The Record)

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