Fort, Sandy Hook on developers’ wish lists
Your Turn
George Moffatt
Guest Column

If anyone thinks developers aren’t running New Jersey, they must be living on Mars.

I was fleetingly impressed when Gov. James McGreevey limited development in the northwestern Highlands area to protect water supplies. I should have known better. At the same time, he was quietly negotiating to give developers their so-called Fast Track bill, because — get this — we aren’t developing New Jersey fast enough.

Fortunately, then-Gov. Richard Codey acted like a real governor in temporarily blocking the bill. Whether Gov. Jon Corzine acts “real” remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Long Branch citizens are losing their homes because it seems the city’s future hinges on K. Hovnanian making a few extra trillion dollars by building much-needed $700,000 condos on their property.

The Legislature could stop this outrageous misuse of eminent domain for private gain, but has done nothing yet.

In contrast, Rep. Joseph Kyrillos Jr. quickly weighed in on the future of Fort Monmouth with a bill that would dilute the say of three municipal representatives on the fort’s redevelopment authority by expanding the governor’s appointees.

In explaining his uninvited interest — he doesn’t represent the fort and he didn’t consult the mayors — he facetiously argued, “There was a vacuum there.”

Of course there was — the smaller, more representative committee left no room for developers to get their foot in the door.

Kyrillos first caught my attention when he once fulsomely praised the National Park Service’s plan to turn Fort Hancock into a profit center by privatizing and commercializing 36 buildings for 60 years. He promised to do all he could to let businesses into the national park in a letter co-signed by a bunch of his friends — all developers and chamber-of-commerce types. No surprise there. He also steadfastly supports Fast Track.

His developer friends include Jersey Shore Partners, a lobby for the concrete-and-asphalt crowd. Its president, Noreen Bodman, recently invoked hurricanes Rita and Katrina to scare taxpayers into supporting millions for “shore protection,” a euphemism for repairing environmental and safety problems caused by developers who build too close to the water’s edge. Significantly, although these “partners” always tout tourism when pillaging the public trough, they never propose increasing public beach access as part of the deal.

Bodman also works for James Wassel, a local real estate speculator whom the NPS picked as its proposed Fort Hancock “partner,” which would give him control of one- to two-thirds of the fort.

If the public doesn’t stop this privatization plan, we could lose the fort to commerce and up to 1,813 beachfront parking spaces — a 36 percent cut in beach access — to corporate parking. And we’d be stuck subsidizing this commercial invasion through tax write-offs and credits.

Neither our public nor private land is safe. So the next time you see developers, bureaucrats or politicians piously “partnering” for “the public good,” hide your wallets and property deeds. They’re only safe on Mars.

George Moffatt

Oceanport