Pride Without Empathy. Enemies Foreign & Domestic. Private concerns given preference over public environmental values.

Pride without Empathy. Enemies Foreign and Domestic RD & Friends

What are the interacting elements of meaning to the management objectives concerned with Waterview Landscape? What would the cumulative impacts be, if we change the immediate neighborhood forever, and injure further our natural resources, including our water supply, as Waterview landscape is in fact part of the watershed of the Highlands Watershed?

All enemies foreign and domestic; RD is the foreign and their advocates; Barberio and dePierro the domestic. Public officials openly favoring outside forces of corporate developers with absolutely no empathy, respect or recognition of the public opposition to RD schemes for unnecessary and unwise, frankly stupid land use; from original upscale housing and retail, to Whole Foods and retail, back to the 666 housing units. We must all ask, and it is evident in many ways, when does private property end or conflict with “community”. How does an outside force like RD have the right to change; harm a community and forever change its quality of life and injure the environment, because it is their property?

The property here in question is more valuable in its present state as a natural resource asset and a community enhancement. These enemies undermine and toy with legislation that has advanced science, community and land use away from mindless market speculation development injuring our natural resources; ignoring accumulative impacts and future costs for bogus tax ratables; choosing the value of money over the value of life itself, for the municipality will have more to spend, while they cry austerity and raise taxes anyway, or play a shell game, while the average homeowner receives below minimal tax reductions, like $6 a year or less. In any township; a corporation in itself, the best interest of the community and its health come first, not the power of money from outside forces. In this case Parsippany leaders have taken money from SuperPac of which RD and other outside corporate briberies have been linked ;should have no place in local politics.

Council dePierro has done more, openly and verbally to oppose regional planning; for what reason we must ask? As he said once; “Decisions we make are not our own”; really well in that case, then why oppose regional planning that allows more public input, transparency and understanding of why certain landscapes should not be developed or over developed.

This is science, not politics. dePierro undermines a great advance made in land use and science, alleging it interferes with property rights, not true. He also does not find any need of concern to protect water, or remaining landscapes, while others lie developed, idled or abandoned. He is not linked organically to things that really matter like sustainability his social concepts are all manufactured ones, not his own, a brand name. He talks of Home Rule rather than regional planning, which is developers rule, and allows never ending development instead of post development growth; he is addicted to change as change shows his power to collaborate with the forces of money not community; not in Parsippany’s best interest.

Barberio vowed he would somehow acquire waterview as open space. He tried instead to cheat, in one of the worse open space rip-offs in its history. This saving of waterview and the integrity and beauty of the Intervale Road Area could have been accomplished already. How? By Parsippany participating in the Regional Conformance, of which after being allegedly in for 14 years did nothing to better our own master plan or identify important landscapes as natural resources. A simple checklist approach would have put waterview on ice, off-limits, because of its importance to its citizens and the part it plays in the water cycle, as a flood buffer and ground water recharge area. Its tress and slopes add beauty to Parsippany. Under Regional Conformance legal protections from such lawsuits as RD, could not have occurred. All this inconsiderate and not inclusive or transparent behavior by the administration has costs tax payers unnecessarily. There is something even more sinister in it all; officials that openly opposed their own community and citizens; an administration that uses divide and conquer within its own neighborhoods and self-serving interest. The Mayor used jobs as a reason, as if he were some Governor. The truth is he does not even manage his own townships jobs properly in their duties and responsibilities, this is where his concern should lie and no other. (If we are being sued by RD anyway; then under home rule the Township could of condemned waterview landscape for its own best interest or as farmland as it is now being used by the owners for a tax-haven)

Our planning Board also needs to favor its community more and especially come out openly for regional plan conformance, as it is possible to have growth and adhere to best practices and ecological balances; all land is not property or real estate but an element of life giving essential in sustainability in the age of climate change.

We have those like dePierro who place themselves above the people as RD does, as SuperPac does, these types should not be allowed in public office, as they are not loyal or wise in their decisions. They are not leaders but followers. We hold rank in a spiritual hierarchy of beings, in this organic relationship mutual reciprocating beneficial relationships are possible, in the world of winner takes all, and the money to, that is not possible. There can be no pride in Parsippany without empathy. Politicians that have no empathy toward their own community and its remaining beautiful places are not worthy of one’s vote. Waterview has many inherit natural assets; will they be ignored by our Mayor and certain councilman? Will we continue to stay out of regional conformance? It is most ironic because Parsippany’s main reason for conforming was to avoid being made to comply with an overkill of public housing. This administration has failed us, and continues to do so.

Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions provides the following information.

A municipality can reduce the number of acres available for development by showing how much land it has in each of the following categories.

· Restrictive covenants that run with the land (such as conservation easements);

· Steep slopes over 15 percent if regulated by a local steep slope ordinance;

· Wetlands (as delineated by the State);

· Floodplains (as delineated by the State);

· Sites listed on the NJ Register of Historic Places, plus a “reasonable” buffer area;

· Land that the town plans to purchase within one year for active or passive recreational purposes.

COAH does not, however, exclude land protected by other “critical area” ordinances, such as stream corridor or wellhead protection ordinances. Towns can keep unwanted Builder’s Remedy developments from those areas only by proactively finding and designating other appropriate areas for affordable housing.

Where is the leadership that the mayor claimed he possessed, why was Parsippany taken out of regional Conformance? Ironic that the original intention was to avoid over development of public housing; of which we already have plenty and abound with already developed landscapes. Why has our environmental committee been silent?