Can New Milford Outfox the Foxes?

I so hate to put it this way, but bend over New Milford, you’re about to get it in the backside. If you think that’s crude, then wait till you see what’s coming. It’s not pretty. And unless New Milford organizes a focused effort against it, we will have to yield to what these greedy sociopathic bullies have planned for us.

I am referring to what is happening with the United Water Property, soon to be owned and developed by Hekemian (Peter being VP of development for S. Hekemian Group, and managing director of "New Milford Redevelopment Associates" -- a name I can only assume they smoothly created to make it psychologically harder for us to fight them. Disarming isn't it?  It's got our town name in it. Has anyone even heard of NMRA before they targeted New Milford?).

Despite Hekemian's so-called experts testifying to how great this monstrosity of a development is going to be for us, New Milford doesn't want to add to its flash flooding with more impervious cover. We don’t want a development right next to the high school putting our children in harm’s way. We don’t want to entice high-density families into our overcrowded school systems.

New Milford is struggling, and we can’t bear any more burden.

United Water represents itself as being dedicated to its customers and helping better the lives of the people in the neighborhoods they serve.  What a bunch of bunk.  They could very easily have left that property unsold, and undeveloped as a gesture of thanks for the years our community housed their plant, not to mention being their bread-and-butter as customers. But of course they didn’t -- though they are well aware of New Milford’s struggles some of which may have been caused by them.

Can we expect United Water to sprout a conscience and take care of and protect its customers from what’s about to happen?

Can we expect the Hekemians to care more about the people they are preparing to hurt than the almighty dollar?

Can we expect ShopRite to understand that it will be causing people grief down the road if they bring their impervious cover and massive amounts of traffic to the UW property directly across from the high school?

Can we believe Hekemian’s expert engineer, Michael Dipple, when he says that they have designed this property so that even less water will be added to the river than before, even though he had inconsistently said in earlier testimony that the development was engineered “to keep the flood waters off the site”?  The site in which they are imperviously covering with a bank, a pool, a 4-story apartment complex with multi-level parking garage and a super ShopRite. Hmmm…

Zoning Board member, Joe Loonam, had confronted Dipple with the reality NM has continually been facing by showing him a fairly recent picture of the flooded back area, but, expert that he is, Dipple remained faithful to his outdated maps as a reference, as if we would somehow be convinced against our own eyes and experiences just because he, the engineer with his inaccurate data, said so. (I mean what do you do as an expert engineer when you’re confronted with real data that discredits your data?)

Dipple the engineer also said that there will be “no impact to the adjacent user’s property,” even though, as Zoning Board member Peter Rebsch so adroitly pointed out, the whole area will be lit up like a Christmas tree.

Imagine living in the houses directly across from that site, which now face the solitude of nature, but in future will face cars with headlights driving around looking for places to park.  Try convincing these people -- when they’re trying to enjoy a quiet evening resting in their homes -- about “no impact.” Did the engineer go out and measure the hearing distance of a beeping horn, or a car alarm going off, before making this statement?  Perhaps when he said “no impact” he was referring to no impact to Peter Hekemian while he’s counting his money at home in his palace, or to the France-owned United Water Company who is going to add a couple more million to their billions with this stinkin’ sale.

Because as I see it, there is going to be more traffic, more flooding, a further strain on municipal services when the police department is repeatedly called out to the site for the inevitable conflicts that come with having a bunch of people packed into a tight space (drugs, drinking, domestics and parking lot fender benders). PLUS having to find room for a load more children in a system already overcrowded by a surplus of 400+ students, along with the very real threat of having hundreds and hundreds of unknown individuals in close proximity to the school.

Along with the fact that it will change the face of New Milford in a less than positive way, my number one concern is the students of New Milford High.  Anyone can see that it’s not wise to place a high-density apartment complex, with a multitude of unknown factors, smack next to a school that houses young, vulnerable, students. Anyone, except for experts who are being paid to sell a monster to a town who doesn’t want it.

I was not affected by the floods, but I will always remember with profound sadness Sharon Hillmer’s nightmare after the rising flood water invaded her home leaving her homeless and out of sorts. Also, with the ShopRite newly relocated to the UW property, my trip to the grocery store will be shortened since I live right on Main Street. However, in the end we are all connected.  What affects one affects the whole. I wouldn’t want to be those people across from the newly developed United Water Property.  I wouldn’t want to be the flood victims down river of the flash floods created by all that runoff.  And if it was me hurt by these things, I wouldn’t want my neighbors saying: Good luck chump, I’m glad it’s not me.  I’d rather have them feel my pain, and be strong neighbors I could rely on to help me fight through my problems knowing that it could be them someday.

I always tell my son that a mark of maturity is when you move from thinking of yourself to thinking of others in the world.  How your actions affect them.  How you make them feel. Caring about not hurting them, or placing them in harm’s way. People who think solely of themselves and their needs are nothing but parasites. And there’s nothing worse than a well-funded sociopathic parasite. That’s what we have on our hands New Milford, so watch out, trouble is on the horizon. And unless you join forces and do something about it, your lives are about to get harder.

As my mother-in-law has said:  You gotta be clever when dealing with a fox. It is my hope and prayer that these foxes have underestimated the residents of New Milford. Grassroots efforts are forming, and if this thing is to be undone, I think that is what it’s going to take.

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p.s.  This blog is stemming from having attended Thursday's Zoning Board meeting.  I have to say that these meetings tend to be impressively boring sometimes, but there is always something that happens at them that makes me happy I went.  Yesterday’s highlight was the way the members of the Zoning Board responded to the testimony.  You learn people through experiences, and my experience last night left me with a blooming respect for the Zoning Board. They are fellow town members who are representing our interests and taking them to heart.  Joe Loonam, Peter Rebsch, Frank Appice, Scott Sproviero, and Ronald Stokes did themselves proud by asking the right questions. It is during moments like this that faith is renewed and hope sprouts another bud.

p.s.s. Is there anyone who will be willing to shop at a moldy ShopRite once it's been flooded?