McAfee Redevelopment Area

We do not think the Town Council’s actions of late have been financially conservative or prudent. Some examples of this? They paid 3.8 million dollars for the Vernon town center firehouse, which was appraised at 1.3 million. They footed the bill for investigating the Whispering Woods developer’s problem. They paid an extra $500,000 for the initial phase of Maple Grange Park. These are part of a long list of the council’s problematic spending habits.

The proposed Redevelopment Plan submitted on April 30 to the town council continues the spending. Our position is that those property owners in the redevelopment areas will be subsidized by the other Vernon taxpayers. Most of Vernon home owners, not in the redevelopment zone, will be paying higher taxes than property owners in the redevelopment areas.

. The proposal was authored by the council’s redevelopment consultant Mr. Benecke and the developer’s lawyers. It was first introduced at the last meeting in March at which time Mr. Benecke suggested that the council take action on the proposal immediately. At the April meeting Mr. Benecke was joined by the planning board’s attorney Mr. McNamara, who argued for fast action on the proposal. Rationale given for the fast action was that the law may be changing and the proposed new law (S-1975 & A-3257) would require such things as a “Pay to play” disclosure provision. “Pay to play” means a person, consultant or contractor contributes to political campaigns and then gains lucrative contracts and other goodies. The provision would require the contributors to be listed publicly. There is also another provision requiring the developer to notify property owners and tenants of pending redevelopment. For example, apparently the tenants or time share owners at Legends hotel were not notified of the redevelopment area designation. Without knowing what was going on, they could not contest, or have control over their property. Under the proposed law they would have to be notified at every redevelopment step. This pending legislation was brought forth because of abuses under the redevelopment plans of other areas, and our position is that we should not undertake another large scale development until the new legislation is implemented. We further hold that the Council should concern itself with the two large redevelopment areas, Intrawest and the Town center, and these projects should be concluded prior to finding new areas to redevelop.

We found a number of concerns after reading the redevelopment plan. The proposed Redevelopment Plan contains language in section 6 supporting the following: 6 (a) allows use of eminent domain for taking properties, 6(b) seeks recommendations for additional Redevelopment Areas, 6(d) town pays for consultants ?, 6(e) arrange for an extension of credit or loans to the developer for any work at the site, 6(f) creates another public agency that provides parks, sewerage, recreation centers for the occupants of the development, 6(j) TAX abatements, Section 8 gives the developer what he is currently suing the township for, and that is 500 houses whose occupancy limitations are deed restricted until the council at a later date says there not.

We do not support any of these sections nor in our opinion is this ordinance financially beneficial to the tax payers of Vernon.