Create Your Own Hardship & Then under local guise have the People pay you in return as the Hardship is reversed on them

THE HIGHLANDS WATER PROTECTION AND PLANNING COUNCIL AND THE COUNCIL ON AFFORABLE HOUSING MEMORANDUM IS STILL IN EFFECT. RD’s Private Concern appears more important.

Water is a public trust and in New Jersey is in deficit in many if not all places; including Parsippany. Experts within New Jersey’s own environmental agencies, concerning water allocations, say within 10-years the whole of NJ will be in such deficits; one of the reasons is obviously over development and bad land use. Parsippany may be about to add to the list of private economic concerns over the public environmental values. Parsippany is blatantly ignoring its citizen’s best interest, by not recognizing the responsibility of public trust in protecting the water beneath out feet for future generation and the present available advances in land use law; specifically Parsippany’s failure to advance itself by conforming to regional conformance, taking advantage of its geographic location within the NJ Highlands. The Highlands Water Protection Act, NJSA 13:20-1 creates two areas within the region: a preservation area in which further development is strictly regulated and a planning area in which development is encouraged, subject to conditions. Preservation goals for both Preservation and Planning Areas shall protect, restore and enhance the quality, and quantity of the waters of the Highlands, to preserve environmentally sensitive lands, to preserve lands needed for recreation and conservation, to promote brownfield remediation and redevelopment, to promote water resource conservation and to promote compatible uses of Highlands’s resources.

Our present administration seems not the least bit concerned in the very element of Earth entrusted to it; not even legal protections available under regional conformance, which would ensure the above mentioned conditions of trust and responsibility toward ourselves and the future in ensuring proper land use, instead we have a private interest RD & Bell Mead asserting themselves against our best interest because of their hardship in attempting to subvert an important environmentally sensitive landscape and forever change an immediate neighborhood for no just cause or reason, other than an administrations claim to desire a tax ratable of dubious worth. Parsippany seems to be claiming a hardship on itself and is willing to destroy one of its neighborhoods to this desire for a tax ratable, ignoring all other factors of law and environment which should be its main concern. They are overzealously siding with a private developer against the community to the point of shadiness in that a private interest will actually be benefited or compensated with 3.5 million dollars of open space tax monies despite the fact that the developer has created his own hardship, and is creating an even larger one upon the immediate neighborhood, and the future wellbeing of our water supply a common trust.

Simply because the property in question, waterview is seen only in the light of real estate and development, despite its vital actual ecological worth within our watershed; especially the “Buried Valley Aquifer System” of which Parsippany receives 65% of its drinking water, where once it received 100%. Two other private sources make up the difference, as our present rate of consumption exceeds demands. Taking away ground water recharge areas within this buried valley system only exasperates the loss of recharge and the amounts of clean water making its way back into the system. The Buried Valley Aquifer is highly venerable to contamination, due to the highly permeability and shallow depth to the ground water. Pollutants can easily occur directly from the surface or where pumpage is sufficient, from streams or lakes. Almost the entire entire surface of the aquifer region can be a recharge area, so much of the once 100% water source is now reduced to at least 65%, and the quality of the less recharge is also contaminated. Removing or developing the waterview landscape will only reduce even further the water resource and surly cost us more in the near future to buy more water from private sources, and injure the commonly shared Buried Valley Aquifer System. Present wells in the area already require aerations because of loss of recharge and contaminations. What sense does it make to protect certain wellheads when recharge areas are not so protected, especially such a predominate one like waterview?

How will a tax ratable compensate for such thoughtless private development interest; by assuring officials salaries into the future, by spending for addition police and infrastructure? How will the loss of quality of life be made up for? It cannot!

It has not been proven any that any mistaken was made in the original planned office space; nor has the evidence of the original zoning been made public; or any such maps in relation to the original zoning been shown or produced. No evidence in the change of the immediate neighborhood has been shown, and no public need has been forthcoming or proven to justify rezoning that would forever change the immediate neighborhood. No clear or convincing evidence has been produced at all! Instead we have a “threat” by the developer to install public housing, under a builders remedy lawsuit. What New Jersey Law would allow such corrupt and exclusionary practices; that can subvert Municipal land use law and other environmental laws now in place? How can the immediate neighborhood not be considered rather given in a threat of what should be an obligation?

If Parsippany votes in favor of this threat, they are in effect being openly exclusionary in practice, as the background for the decision was made in direct favor of avoiding a nil but possible scenario of housing being built on waterview; despite evidence in legislation and our own Master Plan that contradicts such actions. This blatant act of exclusion, an unwanted, unneeded Whole Foods and retail in open opposition to public housing threats, must be called what it is malfeasance. Parsippany itself claiming a need for a tax ratable over the best interest of its residence and the immediate neighborhood is also a misuse of power and misrepresentation of the public by private interest.

In a recent landuse case in Englewood, NJ three judges wrote in a decision for the Superior Court of NJ the following; “We have long recognized that a zoning board duty to consider the surrounding neighborhood encompasses more than just consideration of the municipality itself, or the immediate vicinity of the structure” In Parsippany we have come to an administration that does not even consider its own and especially others. We fail to advance ourselves into regional planning and legal protections and we fail to even adhere to our own municipal master plans goals and objectives. There can be no other conclusion other than the present powers are totally in the interest of the private and not the public.

It still needs to be explained what logic drove Parsippany into conformance from 2009-2014 because of the fear of public housing, and right before the Court diction on the new remedy in lieu COAH, dropped out of conformance, and made no advances in their master plan and most of all denied the residents legal protections from such lawsuits as RD has been subjecting the tax-payers? This breach of trust must be seen and recognized for what it is.

Any King, Governor, Mayor or official whom does not know nor care to know the very ground beneath their feet; his immediate country landscapes, is not worthy of public office. To see land only as real estate shows a narrow mind unable to see forest for trees and is not capable of promoting prosperity, harmony or balance. RD bad investment has now become Parsippany’s tax payers’ burden and the futures problem.

The mayor has abandoned his word in the statement he made before the elections in front of hundreds of people, of obtaining all of waterview 26 acres and tried to squeeze off an unfair deal completely in favor of RD. Home Rule does not work and leaves us vulnerable regional conformance has many more advantages yet our leaders misinform and allow unscrupulous corporations like RD to dominate our lives and waste our resources both natural and financial. Rather than defend the community the administration advocates in the interest of others, big corporate land owners whose bank accounts are most likely in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands. How long will we allow ourselves to be denied the benefits and transparency of regional planning? Builders Remedy allows no developer simply because he own property to subvert law, and the remedy does have a grassroots element that the courts encourage, unlike our present situation. Let the remedy go to court, if it even gets that far. Waterview has already been voted NO on the whole Foods.

If our open space tax dollars may be used for “other purposes” according to the amended ordinance of 2012, then let the 3.5 million in part be used to hire a land use law attorney to forever put RD in their place; and have the whole of the 26 acres as promised.