East Brunswick Council Candidates Respond to Mayor Cohen’s recent TapInto Article

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ– Councilwoman Camille Clark and Council Candidates Curt Philipczak and Dhar Khona released the following statement in response to Mayor Cohen.

“While the TAP article and the Mayor focus on the semantics in differentiating between the phrases and terms “Redevelopment Zone” and “other” new construction, the end product is the same.  Simply put, more people, more traffic, more congestion, increased school taxes, more demands on the infrastructure and more demands on the Departments of Public Safety, Water, Sewer, Public Works, and Parks and Recreation.  These demands translate into increased costs and higher taxes. Residents are concerned with how all this activity is going to impact on their lives, both now with construction vehicles and interrupted traffic patterns and in the future, with all the additions to our community.

It is irresponsible and naïve for the Mayor to dismiss the valid concerns of residents or to attribute their concerns to a lack of their knowledge about these matters.  Mayor Cohen states that the dialogue about redevelopment has been “hijacked by the Summerhill and Hart’s projects that have nothing to do with the Redevelopment Zone”.  The concerned residents of East Brunswick are right to point out their concerns about high density housing projects, when they are the ones that will ultimately pay the consequences.  This disjointed development will have disastrous long term effects on traffic, real estate values and the quality of schooling in this Town.

We cannot segregate these “projects” and deal with them on a one by one basis.  A community is a living entity.  Much like a human body, when surgery is contemplated on an arm, every other part of the body must be taken into consideration; so, to with a municipality.  When construction is contemplated on one road, major construction, its impact all other areas, both immediate and distanced away, must be considered.   This is not being done by the current administration.  The residents deserve to have a detailed listing of all the projects with the numbers of units and the changes contemplated to traffic patterns be presented to them…not a dribble of “one at a time and let’s hope the residents don’t put all the pieces together”, and realize life as they have known it is being pulled apart.”

Questions or comments may be directed to eastbrunswick2018@gmail.com.