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To the editor:
At its meeting of Feb. 6, Emerson’s borough council (minus the dissenting voice of Councilwoman DiPaola) voted to authorize the use of eminent domain to seize four properties for the sake of downtown redevelopment. The properties include the Cinar restaurant, Ranch Cleaners and the Cork and Keg, all on Kinderkamack Road in Block 419.
The public may believe that the seizure of these properties is unavoidable, since that’s the yarn the mayor and council have been spinning since last February, when they sent out a mailer to all Emerson households.
In it, they claimed that as a result of Superior Court Judge Jonathan Harris’ court order of October, 2001, regarding Emerson’s fair housing obligations, “the Borough […] designated the downtown as an Area in Need of Redevelopment.” But there’s one problem with that claim: Harris never ordered Emerson to redevelop its downtown for the purpose of affordable housing.
Since that time, Emerson’s governing body has reached a tentative agreement with the Fair Share Housing Center (an affordable housing advocacy group) to meet its present affordable housing obligations. That accord includes 20-plus low-income units to be built by the downtown redeveloper.
Again, the mayor and council are insisting that this agreement gives them no choice, that they must develop Block 419 and use condemnation to do so.
But the notion that this was forced upon them is simply untrue. As Judge Harris said in his 2001 decision, Emerson, like all municipalities, is “entitled to chart its own course as to how to comply with the Mount Laurel II [fair housing mandate] and where to implement it.”
Neither the court nor Fair Share Housing compelled Emerson to use the downtown redevelopment to meet its Mount Laurel obligations. That was the governing body’s idea. Why was there never a serious public discussion about possible alternatives? Because, I suspect, Emerson’s governing body is determined to use the excuse of affordable housing to convince the public that the high-density redevelopment and use of eminent domain is inevitable.
Whether or not the public falls for that ploy may not matter, since Emerson is now facing a lawsuit from the owners of the properties cited above, challenging the redevelopment designation and the use of eminent domain. Their case is a strong one. But no matter the outcome, there’s one thing for sure: the lawyers defending Emerson will be owed a lot of money, and the taxpayers of Emerson will be footing the bill.
Kenneth Hoffman
Emerson
The writer is a former Emerson councilman