A Nice Man Is Not a Plan

_Originally published by Edmund Tom Maciejewski at TomForTown.com._

Let me start with something I mean sincerely. I have nothing personal against John Foster. He shows up. He reads the community events at every meeting. He cares about this town. If this were a contest for nicest guy on the dais, he would win it walking away.

But nice is not the job. On June 30, the Council's last meeting before a deadline that will help decide whether 96 more market-rate apartments get built here, the body Foster leads approved a bill list, a block party permit, new police radios, and, tucked inside a bundle of routine consent votes, the designation of a brand-new "Urban Renewal" company as redeveloper of a downtown project. A corporate form that exists, under New Jersey law, for one purpose: to hold a tax break.

Nobody at that table said one word about the deadline. And the man with the gavel, the Council President whose job is to run the meeting and set its priorities, asked nothing.

This Is The Pattern, Not The Exception

I have watched this Council closely for a decade, and I will document the full record over the coming weeks. But the shape of it is already clear. Foster inherited the town's 2016 affordable housing settlement. That predates him, and I will not pretend otherwise. What happened next, though, happened on his watch and with his vote: the Connell campus rezoned in March with no public benefit extracted in return; a downtown redevelopment machine that quietly manufactures the next round of developer tax breaks; and the one project that would actually shrink total construction left to drift toward a missed deadline in silence.

To be fair to him, Foster did sign a March 2024 letter, alongside every other Council member, urging Trenton to soften the state housing law. So he was engaged enough to co-sign a letter. He was not engaged enough to manage what the law was doing three blocks from Town Hall. That is the whole problem in one sentence: going along is not governing.

> Going along is not governing. A Council President who never asks the question is not leading.

I Have Been Sounding This Alarm For Ten Years

I am not new to this fight, and I do not ask anyone to take my word for it. The record is public, it has my name on it, and here is a piece of it.

> My words, 2023: "The [redevelopment law] has been leveraged to incentivize the construction of apartment buildings along Springfield Avenue... offering developers significantly reduced tax rates. A crucial detail is that these taxes don't contribute towards our local schools. Consequently, the wider tax-paying community shoulders the cost of educating children from these new developments."

> Edmund Tom Maciejewski, on the 311 Springfield Avenue redevelopment study, NJ21st, June 2023.

In that same 2023 piece, I described watching Council members prepare to vote yes on a redevelopment study they could not explain, wondering aloud whether they were "merely following the advice of 'experts,' whose financial interests could potentially benefit" from the designation. I wrote that two years before the June 30 meeting I just described. Nothing has changed except the address.

> Reported, 2017: At the League of Women Voters candidates forum, TAPinto Berkeley Heights reported that I opposed these "tax abatements," which I described as "essentially giving away the farm." At the same forum, other candidates said they supported the abatements.

And going back further, to my first campaigns: I warned in writing that overbuilding apartments would strain our schools and change the character of this town, I fought two separate Council attempts to restrict residents from recording public meetings, and I wrote and proposed a "Berkeley Heights Sunshine Act" to force more of this government into the open. A decade later, we are living inside the exact tax-and-transparency problem I described.

It Is Not Too Late

None of this is sealed. The downtown tax exemption tied to that June 30 designation has not been voted yet. A real PILOT standards ordinance, adopted now, would govern it. The affordable-only building at 31-41 Snyder Avenue can still be saved, and even enlarged into something that reduces total construction rather than adding to it. The old Nokia Bell Labs site has not been zoned.

Credit where it is due: with Snyder Avenue, this Council has, at last, taken a first real step toward the affordable-only approach I have argued for. A decade late is better than never. The job now is to make sure the first step is not the last.

What it takes is a Council that asks questions before it votes, and a Council President who leads the room instead of reading the events calendar while the important decisions slide by on consent.

Come to Town Hall on Tuesday, July 21, and ask two questions that fit in a three-minute comment slot:

1. Did the Township prove site control of 31-41 Snyder Avenue by the July 1 deadline, and where is the proof?

2. Will the Terrace II financial agreement include a tax break, and will the Council order an independent financial analysis and a school-impact statement before voting on it?

I like John Foster. I just do not think liking someone is a reason to hand him the keys for another four years while the meter runs. Our Council did half the job on housing. I am running to finish it, and over the next several weeks, I will show you the rest of the record, one piece at a time.

Edmund Tom Maciejewski is a candidate for Berkeley Heights Township Council.

*Paid for by Edmund Maciejewski for Township Council.*