Categorized | Editorial

EDITORIAL: Everybody Can’t Live Here Pt. 2

All  new construction whether it be Residential, Single Family Homes and/or Apartment Complexes will affect all residents. It is incumbent on all Municipal Board Members to keep that in mind when voting on such projects.

Some Members of the Planning Board have been very outspoken about how proposed multi-unit developments will be a detriment to our already crowded community. I applaud them for this and they did their due diligence, even at the cost of possibly losing their positions on those Boards.

You can hear the anguish in a parent’s voice at Municipal Meetings when they talk about being forced to have their child bused to schools out of town because of overcrowding.

Transit Bus Drivers complain that the congestion on Smith Street, Perth Amboy causes them to lose time from their schedules.

Time and Time again we hear about the lack of recreational facilities available to our residents  which are very important.

Let’s not turn every empty lot into housing. As we said before, everyone can’t live here.

The census held in 2010 was short of the City’s population by at least 15,000 underground residents.

Let’s take care of those who are here now. When it comes to the residents of the Landings and Harbortown, they were drawn into purchasing condos based on conceptual designs that never came into fruition. They were told that they would be sold as home ownerships and NOT Rentals. I don’t care what the market called for, the Developers should have kept their word.

The amenities that those Residents were promised should go forward. The purchasers of the condos/town homes in Harbortown and the Landings paid a hefty price for their units. Landings started with at least $300,000 per unit and went up to at least $700,000 and up for their residences and I wouldn’t call that chump change.

I know that the Developers are not always available to visit where they have built. But I think in this case of the two Developments, that I have mentioned, it’s imperative that the two Developers make a personal appearance. I know they pay big bucks to the architects, attorney’s, etc., but I think the homeowners would be more forgiving if they heard from the the Developers themselves.

Look at the original plans for the amenities that the Landings proposed. They were spectacular and what was much needed in that area. It would not only have benefited the Landings Residents, but the whole community. We would have rivaled any other municipality that have built along the Raritan River.

I urge the representatives that Kushner (of the Landings) sent to the Planning Board and PARA Meetings to urge Kushner himself to go back to those original plans. As my colleague stated in previous editorials, the parking situation in Perth Amboy is in a perilous state. More rentals are not the solution. We’ve already run out of room to put schools for our student population. How can more multi-unit housing be justified?

We have previously discussed the Transit Village. This project has been in the works for at least 15 years. In the meantime you think that NJ Transit could at least do patchwork on the steps leading down to the tracks. This would not affect train service.

As they’ve done in the past, whenever they’ve had to close one side of the staircase, they have diverted the trains just to use one track. I don’t know what the problem is. All I know is that we’ve had a ton of grants and spent millions of dollars just for studies.

If I had a crystal ball and could have seen how long this is going to take, I would have suggested a contest for architectural students to design a plan for our historic train station. The winning award would have been $100,000. We have very brilliant young minds out there and I’m sure that incentive would have had a lot of very inventive designs submitted. It would have saved us a lot of time and money. Grants are wonderful if they are used constructively. I see the reports on studies, but reports are only as good as the action that they can create andhow quickly they can be expediated. C.M. 

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