A Nice Man Is Not a Plan

A Nice Man Is Not a Plan

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

_Updated July 23, 2026, to distinguish Fourth Round legal compliance from completed construction and to add the controlling dates._

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. That corporate form can qualify for a long-term tax exemption, although the designation itself was not a PILOT approval.

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 additional public benefit identified on the public record; a downtown redevelopment process that can create eligibility for the next developer tax break; and the one project that would actually shrink total construction left without a public status report before a major deadline.

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.

What Berkeley Heights Has And Has Not Satisfied

Berkeley Heights did important legal work. But saying the Township "satisfied" the Fourth Round without explaining the term makes it sound as though the housing was built. It was not.

The Fourth Round runs from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2035. A court order entered April 14, 2025 fixed Berkeley Heights' Present Need at 0 and Prospective Need at 240. The Planning Board adopted the original plan on June 25, 2025; the Council endorsed it June 26; and the Township filed it with the housing program and court by June 27. Fair Share Housing Center requested more compliance information on August 29. The court entered a consent order on December 8. The Planning Board adopted the amended plan on February 18, 2026, and the Council endorsed it on March 16.

That sequence established the Township's plan and current compliance posture. Under New Jersey law, the obligation is to use land-use regulations and affirmative measures to create a realistic opportunity for affordable housing. It is not a representation that all the homes already exist.

The Township's own February 2026 amended plan reports:

The adopted plan's preferred configuration totals 804 housing units: 780 units at Connell and Nokia, including 156 affordable units, plus a separate 24-unit all-affordable project. If the Township misses a consent-order milestone for that 24-unit project, the fallback is a 120-unit inclusionary project at Connell, bringing the total to 900. The difference is 96 market-rate units.

So the fair description is this: Berkeley Heights met a major planning and legal-compliance milestone. It did not complete the ten-year round in the ordinary sense, and it did not build 240 affordable units.

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. At the July 21 Council meeting, officials said the Terrace II developer had not applied for a PILOT and no PILOT agreement was in place. If one is requested later, it would require a separate financial agreement and Council vote. A real PILOT standards ordinance adopted first could govern that decision. The affordable-only building at 31-41 Snyder Avenue can still avoid the 96-unit fallback if the consent-order requirements are met. Enlarging it could reduce the multiplier further, but that would require financing and the agreement of the parties and court. Detailed implementing zoning for future housing at the old Nokia Bell Labs site also remains a consequential decision.

Credit where it is due: with Snyder Avenue, this Council has taken a real step toward an affordable-only approach. The job now is to make sure the first step is delivered.

Nor is Round 4 dormant until 2035. The Snyder Avenue schedule called for site control by July 1, 2026, a construction pro forma and funding sources by December 31, 2026, funding secured by July 1, 2027, and construction to begin within two years after that. The public record reviewed for this article does not establish whether the July 1 site-control requirement was met. The Township should publish the proof and report every remaining milestone. The statute also permits a midpoint realistic-opportunity review of sites that have not advanced.

Round 5 begins July 1, 2035, but its number does not exist yet. State calculations are due by August 1, 2034. Work before then matters: legitimate land preservation, documented environmental and infrastructure constraints, and eligible excess deed-restricted credits can affect the next analysis. Surplus units do not automatically erase the next obligation; they must satisfy the statutory carry-forward rules and remain affordable through the applicable round.

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.

The July 21 meeting has passed, but two questions still deserve answers at the next meeting and in the Township's public files:

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

2. If Terrace II or another project later requests a PILOT, will the Council require an independent financial analysis and a school-impact statement before voting?

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 completed important plan-adoption and implementation steps. It has not completed construction, financing, project oversight, PILOT policy, or preparation for the next round. That is the other half of the job, and I am running to do it.

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

*Paid for by Edmund Maciejewski for Township Council.*