NJ DAMNS TRENTON
State approves new office buildings and juvenile jail >>
The state constitution. TRENTON »
Who cares?
An impact study. Who needs one? Public testimony. Forget about it.
In true Jersey fashion, the State Leasing and Space Utilization Committee continued the state’s ramrodding ways on Monday by approving two controversial projects in Mercer County during Gov. Chris Christie’s final days in office. The three-member board — comprised of State Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), Assemblyman Raj Mukherji (D-Hudson) and assistant state Treasurer Robert Shaughnessy — unanimously approved the state office buildings project in Trenton and the new juvenile jail in Ewing despite warnings their actions were violating the state constitution.
Under the state’s constitution, all new debt, such as the $420 million in bonds for the projects, must be authorized by the voters.
“The case law is clear that this commission, this body here today, the votes you’re taking, does not have the authority to create new debt,” Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) cautioned his colleagues at Monday’s hearing. “But by approving these leases, that’s essentially what you are doing. This violates the constitution. At some point in time, we need to start following the rules. Otherwise, we’re going to make the finances of the state further unmanageable.”
Sending the same message in a legal form, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), Former Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer,
the State Leasing and Space Utilization Committee meeting on Monday about building a new juvenile jail in Ewing. The area in red outlines the state-owned property where the new juvenile jail in Ewing will be built.
Trenton Council President Zachary Chester, city realtor Anne LaBate, and Trentonians Jeffrey Laurenti and Shakira Abdul-Ali filed a lawsuit Monday morning against Christie and the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA), which is overseeing the projects, for failing to secure voter approval via referendum for the bonds.
“Because it will not be submitted to the voters at the general election the proposed bond issue violates the Constitution and should be enjoined until such time as it is placed before the voters on a general
election ballot,” Princetonbased attorney Bruce Afran argued in the lawsuit. “This complaint seeks declaratory relief that such bond issue, absent a public referendum, is illegal and violates public policy and should be preliminarily and permanently restrained along with any expenditure of any monies so raised.”
The group of opponents called Stakeholders Allied for the Core of Trenton (ACT) recently launched a GoFundMe page to battle the state’s quarter-billiondollar project to build new Taxation and Health and Agriculture buildings in A new juvenile jail will be built on this state-owned site in Ewing on Esther Avenue near the Library for the Blind & Handicapped and the Ann Klein Forensic Center.
Trenton.
In September 2016, Christie outlined his vision to bulldoze the state’s Taxation building at 50 Barrack St. and the Health and Agriculture building, which is located at 369 S. Warren St., to free up space in Trenton for redevelopment.
A new seven-story, 175,000-square-foot building will be erected at the northwest corner of John Fitch Way and South Warren Street to house Taxation, and a five-story, 135,000-square-foot Health and Agriculture building will be constructed on the southwest corner of North Willow and West Hanover
Streets. Both spaces are currently state-owned parking lots.
The new juvenile jail is set to take shape in Ewing on Esther Avenue near the Library for the Blind & Handicapped and the Ann Klein Forensic Center. The board also signed off on erecting another new detention center in Winslow Township.
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. Gusciora, a city resident who has led the charge to try to derail both plans, blasted Christie’s rush job “without considering input from affected stakeholders and the public.”
“Today, the Joint State Leasing and Space Utilization Committee met to rubber-stamp the Governor’s plan for the construction of two new office buildings in Trenton,” Gusciora said in a statement. “We truly had the potential to reshape our capital city given the scale of this project. Successful urban revitalization projects are predicated on multi-use development. Single-use office buildings will only perpetuate Trenton’s ‘nineto-five’ culture. This project will change Trenton’s streetscape for a generation and, after today, we know it won’t be for the better.” The longtime 15th district assemblyman also thrashed Christie for gaining approval after a different state committee, the State House Commission, voted in November to postpone the matter until Gov.-elect Murphy assumes office.
“Through some sketchy political machinations, Gov. Christie managed to, in his typically bullish and authoritarian way, undo that important work, and ram this project through the approval process in the 11th hour,” Gusciora said. “It’s really disappointing that the Governor, who has ignored the capital city for his entire tenure, will be able to exercise his will and reshape the city for the foreseeable future. It’s politics at its absolute worst.”
To make matters worse, no residents from Ewing or Trenton were allowed to provide testimony at Monday’s hearing about how the projects would affect them.
“It’s not that type of committee today,” said Scutari, who presided over the meeting with an iron fist straight out of Communist China. “We know what your positions are. We understand the for and the against. I think we have a grasp even though we didn’t hear from you at length in terms of your specific objections, I can tell you that I think I know what they are.”
Iana Dikidjieva, a cochair of the group suing the state, wanted to read into the record a statement from Gusciora, who was unable to attend the meeting due to work, but she was also shut down by Scutari’s tyrannical control of the meeting.
“I find it very shocking that the commission will not actually accept testimony from the public,” Dikidjieva said.
During Scutari’s undemocratic rant, one Trenton shouted, “Are you aware of the lack of an environmental impact study?”
Further showing how sloppy the approval process was, no impact statement has yet to be completed by the state’s own admission.
At a Dec. 7, State House Commission meeting, where the Trenton office buildings project ultimately gained initial approval, a founding chair of the Capital City Redevelopment Corporation (CCRC) advised one must be completed.
“It’s not all settled,” warned Ingrid W. Reed, who chaired the board from 1987 until 2010. “Until you have that (impact statement), it seems to me it’s premature to make an arrangement to finance.”
When pressed on the matter, EDA President and Chief Operating Officer Timothy J. Lizura fessed up the lack thereof.
“We are accelerating the presentation to the CCRC for the impact statement,” Lizura said Monday. “We hope to be completed with the presentation by the end of January.”
Assemblyman Mukherji also completely undressed the proposal as a bad redevelopment plan for Trenton, but still voted for it because he didn’t want to “hold up” the project due to the creation of union jobs and the time already invested spent planning.
“Given the EDA’s mission of catalyzing economic development throughout the state, this land is not within the city’s designated commerce center, it’s not within a half-a-mile perimeter of mass transit,” Mukherji said. “We want to encourage mass transit for state employees to get to work. Did it really come down to the fact that we needed to utilize the state land and utilize the tax-exempt bonding mechanism? Would it not have made sense to look at trying to use this as a catalyst for greater local economic development? Is this a wasted opportunity?”
EDA’s leader explained that the state office buildings plan was the “most fiscally responsible alternative” and that a private/public partnership would cost $200 million more over the next 30 years. However, a former EDA head testified earlier this month that the public/ private partnership would lead to greater savings.
Lizura left the door open for mixed-use development of the buildings, but provided no guarantee.
“You can’t look at these in isolation,” the EDA CEO said. “This is a piece of a much larger puzzle that will unveil itself over time.”
Mukherji, a 33-year-old Jersey City resident, also expressed frustration if an undesirable proposal in his district went down the same way with “the lack of deference to the local legislative delegation that represents this area.”
“I guess I’m a little troubled that I’m not affording the courtesy that I would expect,” he said.
Like most the meetings on the plans, union members packed the house.
State Sen. President Steve Sweeney (DGloucester), a union boss, gave Mukherji and Scutari a pep talk before the vote, as did Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Mercer).
“This is an enormous amount of work for the men and women of the building trades, putting regional people, local people on local jobs,” said DeAngelo, who was representing the Mercer and Burlington County building trade councils. “No one wants to come into the holiday on unemployment and seeing these projects further delayed would be a detriment to their livelihood.”
Like the previous hearings, Trenton Mayor Eric Jackson was nowhere in sight as the state made one of its biggest decisions regarding the capital city’s future. Diana Rogers, the city’s Housing & Economic Development director, spoke briefly Monday just to say Trenton supported both plans.
As for the juvenile jail in Ewing that could feature up to 80 beds, New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino outlined that Jamesburg was built 150 years ago and that the two new detention centers would save $20 million annually. One juvenile jail in Woodbridge was also proposed, but it seems to be off the table now.
“It harkens back to a time where kids who were delinquent were put away,” Porrino described of the 900-acre campus with 68 buildings that can house thousands, but currently only holds 144 inmates. “What you have as a result of that are decrepid buildings that require an extraordinary amount of maintenance and work just to keep the roof from falling in and staffing that is mismatched for the number of individuals who are housed there. You need patrols around this enormous facility ... Everybody agrees that the preferred way, the better way to handle individuals who are young are not to place them in prisons. Jamesburg is like a prison.”
The attorney general said Jamesburg costs $44.2 million a year to run at a rate of $306,000 per inmate “to achieve outcomes that we all admit are not as good as they could be.”
“This is like throwing a large portion of that money into the fireplace every year,” Porrino said. “The savings that are created will result in this project paying for itself. It will also allow us the opportunity to take some of those savings and put them back into the rehabilitation and the education that’s so important.”
The attorney general conceded the projects have no support of the local community where they will be situated.
Assemblyman Gusciora and Ewing Mayor Bert Steimann recently both spoke out against the plan.
“These facilities will be built and designed with input from the communities,” Porrino proposed. “The communities will have the opportunity to be heard with respect to the design of the facilities and we’ve also taken steps to make sure costs and expenses of the communities will be defrayed year over year ... We’re going to listen. We’re going to do our best to incorporate in the design concerns that individuals have.”
Porrino said the state could not just build new buildings at Jamesburg because it is in a “secluded location.”
“The best practice here is to build these facilities in places where people can actually get to them,” the attorney general said. “What we’ve seen over time in Jamesburg as compared to other local facilities and county facilities is the visitation, which is so important — the role that families, loved ones and friends play in the rehabilitation of these kids and keeping them connected to communities.”
The reassurances did not comfort one Ewing resident.
“I did not anticipate that the state would build barbed wire on the other side of my property,” Erin Clark said, wishing the state just used the defunct Mercer County juvenile jail on Parkside Avenue in Ewing instead of building a new facility.