Gardner and Hsueh Fear-Mongering Continues

The misinformation and fear-mongering being spread by Mayor Hsueh and his Planning Board Chairman reached a new level in the February 6, 2009 Princeton Packet. Their supporters can only hope that the Packet took their quotes out of context.

Mayor Hsueh is quoted as saying that he is "surprised that the council wants to vote in march." Let's do the math, shall we? Council received the Redevelopment Plan from the Planning Board on February 4th. If the Clerk's Office had issued the necessary public notice to the newspapers immediately for a special meeting, the earliest that the meeting could have been held would be Monday, February 9th. Assuming introduction of the plan that evening, the first time that the public hearing on the plan could be held would be February 23rd.

But that time line would have meant that the public would have been denied an opportunity to review the plan and provide the comments that the Planning Board has denied them.

More importantly, there has been unanimous agreement by Council and the Township professionals that the zoning ordinances implementing the Plan must be introduced at the same time the plan is introduced. Those zoning ordinances still are being written. It was not possible to introduce the plan, even if we wanted to do so, on February 9th. We do not know when we will have those zoning ordinances in hand. Consequently, it is impossible to move a vote on the plan and its implementing ordinances before March as Mssrs. Gardner and Hsueh would have us do.

Moreover, Mayor Hsueh simply misrepresents the truth when he says that taking another week or so to complete the plan will hurt our chances to get funding from the state. Mr. Hsueh would enlist Council in his effort to deny the public its opportunity to be heard on the plan -- a plan that has not been available very long for the public to review, much less comment upon.

Mr. Gardner's statement quoted in the Packet that "every issue was thoroughly vetted and discussed by the Planning Board in an open and transparent manner" is patently false. Let's hope that he was miquoted. If the statement were true, we would not have seen four different community organizations come to Council the following Monday night to complain that their input had either been ignored or prevented because of the precipitous cancellation of two of the meetings scheduled for receiving those comments.

Mr. Gardner also misrepresents my statements during the public comment period at the last Planning Board meeting on the plan. Those comments were limited strictly to the narrow discussion that had preceded them. Moreover, those comments were made prior to the surprise announcement that the Planning Board was shutting down its review prematurely.

If I had known that Mr. Gardner was about to shut down the process, without bothering to consider the request that I made during my public comments, those comments would have been a very different set of statements.

I intend to move the redevelopment plan process expeditiously, but unlike Mr. Gardner and Mr. Hsueh, I intend that the public not be misled and I intend that the public be given its opportunity to provide its input -- just as we have promised these past couple of years. To deny the public its opportunity at the 11th hour just as the entire plan emerges into full view for the first time would be an injustice to our taxpayers and our future residents who depend on us to make sound planning decisions rather than make short-sighted decisions for the sake of political expediency.

Redevelopment Update

Those of you who have followed this blog have noticed no activity over the last several months. That is because the volume of work both in my "day job" and for West Windsor has been overwhelming, particularly with respect to redevelopment. The time committed to redevelopment became virtually full-time as we went through the plan line by line in nearly half a dozen workshops.

As you know, Council referred the plan to the Planning Board in early January over the objections of Heidi Kleinman and myself. We favored completion of our homework and good planning over political expediency. The forces in favor of political expediency caused an incomplete plan to go to the Planning Board. Political expediency now has resulted in a still-incomplete plan coming back to Council.

The Planning Board Chairman, Marvin Gardner, has taken absurdly inconsistent positions with the full support of the Mayor. (At least, we have not heard a peep of concern out of the Mayor about any of this travesty.) He has complained about the 45 day limitation on Planning Board review. He has self-imposed that limitation by refusing to consider asking Council to grant an extension, if necessary. He has closed down the Planning Board review, declaring their work finished after 3 meetings when several organizations had not yet submitted their comments, relying on the published 5 meeting schedule.

Political expediency rather than any serious attempt at good planning is epidemic in West Windsor. One member of council, with the apparent support of two others, is demanding that we introduce the plan as an ordinance by the end of the special meeting of council scheduled for February 23rd.

I will do my best to resist a precipitous introduction of an incomplete redevelopment plan. The current draft provides for a number of housing units "to be negotiated" with InterCap Holdings, Steve Goldin's organization. I will opposed any effort to introduce that plan as currently written because I am confident it means we are committing ourselves to at least 935 housing units in Mr. Goldin's district alone (1 of 10 districts in the redevelopment zone). Given his increasing costs, I am confident that the 935 unit number will go over 1,000 in short order. That is too much housing for one small piece of the redevelopment area on top of the housing that COAH and other considerations will bring to the rest of the redevelopment area.

But I cannot do it alone. Anyone who is concerned about being overwhelmed with housing in the redevelopment area needs to come to the meeting on February 23rd, or better yet, come to public comment during the regularly scheduled meeting of Council on February 17, to provide their input and demand that council remove this serious ambiguity that gives the administration unilateral power to bring a lot of housing into West Windsor. The meeting on February 23 will begin at 6:00 p.m.