This is real and we need to stop it now! The Township Committee is preparing to allow for-profit developers to come in and build 6 buildings and over 400+ apartments, while making us pay for the billionaire developers' property taxes, infrastructure costs, and additional students. Taxes will soar, and our schools will overflow.
We say, "No Way", but we need people to know what is happening and vote it out, so please share the info below with every resident!! Let's keep Cranford a town!
Vote Independent William Thilly for Township Committee on Nov. 8th.
Hello dear friends, I am running for a position on the Cranford Township Committee to among other wonderful things have our current redevelopment agreement with the Fair Share Housing Center (FSHC), signed in February of 2021, renegotiated to terms and conditions agreeable and understood by our residents. Below are some points important to understand.
1. The agreement permits the building of 400+ new apartments in 6 buildings. These include 250 units in 2 buildings at 750 Walnut Ave. Two buildings on North Ave, one on South Ave. and one on Chestnut st. All in town buildings are around 40-50 units each and 4-5 stories tall. All buildings are rental units only of which 15% will be marketed as affordable.
2. The Township has been offering all developers up to 30 year tax exemptions. In exchange for tax free status developers have agreed to pay a percentage of their self reported profits each year in the vicinity of @10% often referred to as a PILOT (Payment in lieu of Taxes). The average PILOT payment received by Townships in a good year is around 15-20% of what would be received if taxes were paid in full. In other words it's an 85% tax break for developers passed on to us.
3. The Township agreed to rezone the entire downtown and beyond to permit high density residential apartment buildings up to 40 units per acre. This rezoning sets the groundwork for additional apartment buildings to be built in the near and immediate future.
Many are concerned with the additional costs to the taxpayers associated with such a large number of new, and future apartment buildings, not to mention the inconveniences during their construction. In addition to the lost tax revenue residents will also be expected to pay for the added infrastructure costs, including new sewer lines, added school space, multi-million dollar flood mitigation projects, extra police and fire, and additional traffic etc. Add the costs of 100+ new students which average $20k per year per student. If left unchecked residents taxes would be expected to rise drastically to keep up.
Recently our administration announced plans to borrow an additional $14-20 million by issuing bonds to pay for the developers' flood mitigation projects at the site of their new proposed buildings at South, and Chestnut, and the existing Birchwood. The mitigation is just to protect the developers' assets, and can end up flooding everyone else in the neighborhood. In essence having the residents pay to flood our own neighborhoods. Issuing bonds also allows a Township to raise taxes well above the 3% annual cap to whatever percentage is needed to pay them off.
Many have been told we must build these 400+ market rate apartments to satisfy an obligation to the state to provide affordable housing units. This is not true. The state requests that we create the affordable rate housing only, not the market rate. Almost all of our affordable housing we have already built. At this time we need only 18 units to meet our quota and have until 2025 to do so. And to be clear, the state has never requested Townships to offer multi-year tax exemptions.
We may supply our affordable housing as we choose. Whether it be by refurbishing current housing stock or through a non profit to build all affordable units together; there exist many alternatives available to avoid any new construction at all if we wish. For example two single-family homes designated as group homes with 9 individuals per home or 9 two-family homes marketed as affordable would give us our 18 credits. There is no legal requirement whatsoever to produce the remainder through a 400 apartment, 5 building deal with 30-year tax exemptions. In fact our current agreement results in an unnecessary 47 unit surplus. Developers will build only 15 affordable apartments per 85 at market rate, so even if we did wish to create our 18 remaining affordable units with a developer we would need only 120 new apartments in total.
Keep Cranford a Town. To stop our over development and have developers pay their own taxes and infrastructure costs please Vote Independent on Nov. 8th!
hey
ReplyDeleteyou make a lot of sense when it comes to high density. Sadly those in control are on power trips to make themselves a hero but tranforming downtowns into new Brooklyns of high density.
ReplyDelete