JUVIE JAIL UPROAR
Ewing residents, officials furious over Christie’s juvenile jail plan being forced through without input
EWING » Gov. Chris Christie is giving the capital district another parting gift that apparently no one really wants.
The State House Commission approved the Republican governor’s proposal last week to build a new juvenile jail in Ewing on Esther Avenue near the Library for the Blind & Handicapped and the Ann Klein Forensic Center. The board also signed off on constructing two new juvenile detention centers in Woodbridge and Winslow Township for a combined total of $170 million for the three facilities.
It is part of a bigger plan to close the New Jersey Training School, the state’s largest juvenile jail — also referred to as Jamesburg — in Monroe Township, and shutter the Juvenile Female Secure Care and Intake Facility in Bordentown Township.
Residents who live on the quiet street where the Ewing jail is supposed to take shape expressed frustration with the lack of notice.
“There was absolutely no notification either to our township and to the residents of the area,” said Regina Pascucci, who has lived on Escher with her husband the past 20 years and found out about the plan after reading an article. “We just feel we’re being blindsided by this.”
Pascucci is not alone in her anger. Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann said Tuesday his administration was also not notified about the proposal by the state. He said the state claimed to send a letter back in September.
“We have no letter from them,” Steinmann said. “It wasn’t certified mail or in any emails. Must of got lost in the mail because we didn’t get it. They just really didn’t communicate at all. I think the municipality has a right to get information and see how this project is going to proceed, what are the security measures, what is all that going to entail, but we got nothing.” At a November meeting, the State House Commission, which is comprised of four state legislators and three Christie appointees, voted to postpone the jail project until the next administration. However, at a meeting on Thursday, that plan was resurrected and passed.
Taking the exact same course, Christie’s plan to demolish and build two new state office buildings in Trenton was delayed at the November meeting, only to gain passage at the December meeting despite opposition by residents.
“This is Gov. Christie’s parting gift to the capital district,” Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer/Hunterdon) said Tuesday, noting both Trenton and Ewing have their fair share of detention centers. “If this is such a great idea, the governor should put it in Mendham Township (where he lives).”
Like other opponents, Gusciora criticized the Christie administration for sneaking through the plan.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate of government to put this in again at the 11th hour, at the end of his term with absolutely no rationale demonstrated and giving no input to the citizens of these locations,” the assemblyman said. “You have seven old white people on the Statehouse Commission that have no nexus to the capital district nor care.”
Pascucci started a grassroots effort by creating a Facebook page called Citizens for Open Space in Ewing to fight the plan. The jail is slated to be built on 22 acres of state land , consisting of wetlands, a field and a wooded area.
“Essentially, they’re tearing down a wooded area and one of the last remaining green spaces in the township,” Pascucci said, outlining homes on the street use wells for water. “We’d like to preserve that. We also need this open land to catch the runoff and to recharge the aquifer.”
Additionally, the Ewing resident and her husband, Al, have concerns about safety and security and what the jail will do to property values on the street, where a dozen residents live.
“Fear of the unknown is what’s terrorizing us about this,” Al Pascucci said. “If this is going to be something really needful and helpful, I don’t think anybody objects. But the problem that we all seem to concur on is there is not a single state facility that is adequately staffed, adequately funded or if it’s a penal institution, it’s adequately secure.”
Location is also a point of contention.
Gusciora said the new jail will be right next to the Christina Seix Academy, the Cambridge House senior residential center and Trenton’s Hiltonia neighborhood.
“You have a city that’s emerging into revitalization,” the 15th district legislator said. “I don’t know why they continuously put Trenton or urban centers as the dumping grounds to solve any social prob- lems.”
The area is already littered with numerous state buildings, Steinmann complained, pointing to the New Jersey Department of Transportation and Katzenbach School for the Deaf.
“It’s compensation that Ewing doesn’t get plus nobody really talks about the impact,” the mayor said. “We as a town need to provide services to that facility, if it’s fire or medical and that never gets taken into consideration and that’s a cost to the taxpayers.”
Ewing has a vacant juvenile detention center that used to be operated by Mercer County on Parkside Avenue, but that was apparently ignored by the state. “Did they look at that? Could they renovate that?” Steinmann questioned. “There were a lot of questions that we wanted to ask that were left unanswered.” Creating some sense of hope, Gusciora said the juvenile jail plan will also need to gain approval from the Joint State Leasing and Space Utilization Committee. But many fear nothing can be done to stop it. “If the state is hellbent on this, you can’t fight them because their money is your money and it’s essentially limitless,” Al Pascucci said. “Our only hope rests on the incoming administration that they will hopefully find different priorities for the $170 million that they plan to borrow. I would hope they could refurbish existing facilities for far less and the incoming administration will have more sensible priorities.”
Ewing’s mayor believes “it’s just a forgone conclusion” the jail will wind up becoming a reality.
“If they do build it, they have a courtesy review to come over to the township planning or zoning board,” Steinmann said, adding residents can have a limited input. “As far as rejecting the plan or any of that stuff, we have no say at all.”