Dear Editor:
Bob Crawford letter to the editor was perhaps too polite toward the Zoning Board of Adjustments, concerning the 879 South Beverwyck Housing Proposal.
It is as if our Master Plan does not exist, while ignoring Highlands Conformance
None of the real issues have been addressed, landscape character, for example: the entire southeast quadrant of the property is included in the National Wetland Inventory and is designated as a Special Flood Hazard Area. The whole neighborhood is zoned RCW recreation, conservation, wildlife, Parsippany is already zoned elsewhere for Public Housing Mandates, and the most seemingly corrupt is that as a house of worship, according to OPR request, Parsippany has admitted, no Highlands Exemption, has been determined, which as a religious institution can only be granted exemption number six, which states:
“Places of worship, schools, or a hospitals: Any improvement, for non-residential purposes, to a place of worship owned by a nonprofit entity, society or association, or association organized primarily for religious purposes, or a public or private school, or a hospital, in existence on the date of enactment of this act, including but not limited to new structures, an addition to an existing building or structure, a site improvement, or a sanitary facility”.
Parsippany is ignoring their own Ordinance 205, Highlands Regional Master Plan Requirements.
Note: “non residential purposes” simply put, religious institution which are tax exempt are not in the Housing Business, and 879 offers nothing different, than the same market will bare, minimum affordable, and for a determined residence of their religious spectrum.Have Parsippany Zoning Board Members been versed in these Chapter 205 requirements, and if so why not? Parsippany has a history of unwising resisting Highlands Conformance under the Water Protection, and Planning Act, a bipartisan legislation passed in August 2004. Parsippany would of been under Highlands in 2010, but for John Inglesino being allowed to stop Parsippany process in 2014. Inglesino and Barberio republican dominated council, simply went along, allowing Waterview Shoppes, and other developments, despite public opposition, and with Waterview a No Rezone Vote.
Why would an alleged religious institution wish to undermine our master plan, and destroy a neighborhood character, and invade a established remaining natural area, as 879 sits in surrounding land and buffer for the Troy Meadows National Natural Landmark? Today this existing structure may have itself been rejected as a site for a major development sitting in the wetland, (and wellhead protection area Tier 1)
If Wildlife Preserves themselves could not rezone part of their land being threatened at the time by the Pilgrim Pipeline, and possible eminent domain,Ordinance 2014:16, how now can ICCC be allowed?
On an ironic spiritual level ICCC, CEO Tajammul Khokhar,has stated at a past hearing; nature, creation, the neighborhood means little to him or his institution. ICCC, and our Zoning Board of Adjustment both lack a true land ethic in their entrusted duty under Municipal Land Use Law Authority.
“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.”..Aldo Leopold- Father of the Modern Environmental Movement.
Toward a sense of Ecology
We all live in a complex biological system. Mitochondria in the cell, cell in the organism, the organism in the ecosystem, the ecosystem in the biosphere. This complex world of biological cooperation is being injured and destroyed, along with a future worth living; this is now the legacy of degraded life we are passing on to our children.
-Professor Emeritus Terrestrial Ecology Tom Wessels-
This whole episode should of ended where it began, Ordinance Chapter 205, Highlands exemption 6. Click here for township ordinance.
Nick Homyak
