Your Turn
Overdevelopment, conflicts in Red Bank
William Meyer
Guest Column

Mayor Edward McKenna has accused me of wasting the borough's money on lawsuits challenging the massive zoning approvals for overly intense developments given away under his regime. A brief exposition of the facts is in order.

In the first lawsuit, the New Jersey Appellate Court in May 2006 nullified a massive density variance approval for 35 residential units, where 12 were permitted by the zoning ordinance, granted to Building & Land Technology (BLT). The court found that there was "an impermissible conflict of interest on the part of the board's presiding officer" that tainted the process. That conflict actually involved Mayor McKenna and board Chairman Michael DuPont, now a candidate for Council, and their law firm's connection and representation to the hidden contract purchaser of the BLT project.

At the beginning of the BLT application, DuPont recused himself, stating that he or his partner had "represented one or both of the applicants a number of years ago." Amazingly he then designated the board's vice chairperson, the daughter of an attorney in the McKenna DuPont firm, as the chairwoman to preside over the application.

He did not announce that his firm's client Palatial Homes, at that very moment, had a contract to purchase the approved BLT project, and was being represented by the McKenna DuPont firm on a then ongoing major development application in Little Silver, bordering many properties in Red Bank.

Given that BLT's alleged sole proprietor/owner had at that time ten judgments against him in the public record, totaling over $1 million, is there any doubt that BLT would never take title to the project and was the "strawman" for the undisclosed Palatial Homes?

Voting in favor of the density variance approval were the acting chairwoman, whose father is in the McKenna DuPont firm then representing the undisclosed Palatial Homes; another board member that owns a real estate brokerage that hired the wife of the BLT principal while the application was pending; and a board member that owns a building company and is now a councilman running for re-election, Art Murphy.

Given this tangle of interests, did the objecting neighbors - with their pleas that the project was too big - have any chance before the McKenna board?

As for motivation, consider the value of the density variance.

The BLT zoning permitted 10 to 12 units; the tainted approval allowed 35 condominium-/townhouses. Assuming a value of $250,000 per raw approved unit (the completed units were to sell upwards of $500,000 each), the extra 23 to 25 units given away would be worth about $6 million. Whose $6 million was that? And what do the Red Bank taxpayers and residents get in return? They get to pay forever for the infrastructure, school and other expenses required by the project in the form of higher taxes while suffering the overcrowding and diminishment in quality of life.

Similar conflicts, or even worse, permeate the approval process on many of the massive development approvals now being routinely handed out under the McKenna/Du-Pont/Menna regime, such as the massively overdeveloped antique center project recently also approved. The lawsuits that have been filed are hardly a waste of the public's time or money - it is one way to expose the self interests and overdevelopment being rammed through under the current regime before Red Bank is transformed into Elizabeth or Woodbridge. So who is really abusing the public and trampling on their interests and rights?

William Meyer

Red Bank