Dear Editor:
As a community we are not meeting our fundamental human needs; thereby incurring unnecessary impacts and costs upon ourselves and diminishing our quality of life. RD an outside force to the community has somehow succeeded in changing our Master Plan to suit their interest. This should never have occurred and it smells of illegality. No force outside the community should be allowed such power within it. No need exist to create a specific retail and commercial zone on the on a landscape zoned as a planned office district easement. The present POD; planned office district is in the best interest of the community, and stands as a well-balanced distribution of remaining environmental sensitivity and biodiversity in the Troy Brook Watershed.
This physical feature brings aesthetic beauty and enhancement to the immediate neighborhood and the surrounding region.
The developer is guilty of using the public housing obligation as a threat to wear down this community through lawsuits and constantly changing his proposals. The public housing was a kick down the door final bully tactic used to cause an unjust compromise of fear, encouraged by the developers allies within the township circles.
Citizens and residents are aware that we have a right to appeal this decision based on a false premise of a housing threat and the fact that no real evidence has been shown to justify need of this rezoning/spot zoning other than an economic downtrend being experienced by all, everywhere. How can this justify changing our Master Plan in closed session without public participation or input, a total lack of transparency and evidence, to show need or change in the immediate neighborhood to justify this likely illegality.
The truth is the developer RD has Pearl Harbored Parsippany during the holiday season 2015. On December 15, 2015 passing ordinance 2015-26, which is clearly in the best interest of the developer, including $3.5 million dollars of our open space tax money to be used as what amounts to a buffer zone, called open space; all of this in the name of fighting public housing obligations. Be aware that if and when the developer succeeds in this endeavor the waterview landscape will be more likely to be lost to public housing; when the unneeded retail commercial zone; including some housing; fails. The next rezone would likely be public housing. In truth we are making it easier for the slippery slope to continue in the degrading of our community’s quality of life.
Politicians whom do not represent their communities interest first are not community leaders, but politicians; politicians which have no place other than their self-promoting against their entrusted residents. In others words not ours, Parsippany’s, but their’s RD’s representatives.
In October 2013 Open space was promised, it has not been forthcoming. We had a planned office district that protected the community from over development or development not in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. In short summary the present POD zone is in the best interest of the community the immediate neighborhood and the surrounding area. Neither the Planning Board nor the developer produced any sustainable evidence to show any need to rezone the property, other than an economic situation shared by all in the society. This cannot be allowed as an excuse to change our master plan, and change forever the character of the effected immediate neighborhood. No need exists for new land development for the purpose of retail and commercial
2015-26 Rezoning Ordinance, POD to RC must not be allowed to stand. Please become part of the new Hydra Head of Community resistance. Many reasons exist to defend this valuable natural resource we know as waterview. Join the Fundraiser answer the call of community; against private interest and do it ASAP before January 25th. Our Master Plan is ours respect the concept of the time value of money not the short-term leading us nowhere and with loss of a sense of home and place.
Nick Homyak
Lake Hiawatha, NJ 07034
