Shedding Boss Control
October 20, 2007 |
Norman's Corner
With major contributions from former Mayor Sandy
Greenberg.
The opening years of the twenty-first century in the City of Englewood have been a period of unprecedented building construction and also of significant political change. Figuring in both of these interrelated phenomena is the looming figure of Bergen County political boss Joseph Ferriero and his need to control megabuck development decisions in Englewood for the benefit of his law client, developer S. Hekemian Kasparian Troast LLC (HKT). The political change has been the slowly growing awareness of the Englewood electorate that certain of their elected officials were not representing them, but had become part of the powerful pay-to-play County political machine led by Ferriero. Efforts to replace those officials have by now been largely successful, but, unfortunately, the barn door may have been open too long, and we may be paying for decades for the irresponsible giveaways that have been approved.
There was good sense in the City administration’s plans as the new century started to permit denser development in our underutilized industrial area in southeast Englewood. The rationale was to reverse the declining proportion of tax revenues provided by the industrial area, and thereby to benefit residential taxpayers. Office construction, in particular, was to be encouraged, since the ratio of tax income to additional municipal expense is normally most favorable for this type of development. Where residential construction was included in mixed-use projects, condominiums should be stressed rather than rental apartments, since tax revenues from condos are significantly higher than from rental facilities. The idea was to plan for the long-term financial health of Englewood. Unfortunately, as time went on, short-term considerations, the financial needs of the developer, and the political needs of our leaders, have repeatedly been allowed to override the long-term interests of the community. Pleading an inability to sell office space, the developer has yet to build or even apply for such construction.
In 2001, HKT proposed to develop a major site in Englewood’s industrial area south of Route 4, and received the support of the City Council for their plan. The original plan, the largest ever proposed in the County, was for a large office, hotel and residential project. The City created a new redevelopment zone to accommodate the plan. It, however, received opposition from industrial property owners who objected to losing their land under eminent domain, and from citizens in neighboring Leonia, from which the property would have been accessed. In addition, there was already concern in some quarters over the close relationship which some Englewood Council members enjoyed with Bergen County boss Joseph Ferriero, whose law firm represented HKT. The plan, including the redevelopment area ordinance itself, was eventually invalidated by the courts on a legal technicality. 9/11 happened, and the developer, Ferriero, and his Englewood allies, went back to the drawing board.
Ferriero’s Englewood allies were First Ward Councilman Doug Bern, Fourth Ward Councilman Jack Drakeford, and, until his term expired at the end of 2003, Mayor Paul Fader, who made appointments to and served on the Planning Board. With significant opposition to development yet to emerge, they had little difficulty in obtaining Council or Planning Board approval for whatever measures were desired by HKT/Ferriero. The only thorn in Ferriero’s side was the Englewood Democratic Municipal Committee, under the leadership of Violet Cherry, which refused to take orders from him.
In 2003, the Municipal Committee selected Dr. Earl Marsan, a dentist, an African-American, and a 20-year member of the Englewood Board of Health, to run for the position of Councilman-At-Large. His name was submitted by the Committee Chair Cherry, to County Chair Ferriero, who under the law must designate the official Party candidate. Ferriero, claiming he had been so requested by Fader, Bern and Drakeford, endorsed instead Vernon Walton, a clergyman, also African-American, and a two-year resident, with a scant voting record. Ferriero then telephoned Marsan demanding that he withdraw, and when Marsan refused he berated him. A hard-fought primary battle ensued, which Walton, with heavy support from the County leadership, plus Congressman Rothman (but not from then County Freeholder and now State Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle), won. The developer, through an intermediary, gave $4500 to the PAC of Senator John Lynch (former Trenton power broker later convicted and jailed for corruption). The PAC, entitled New Directions for Democrats, made a similar donation to Walton’s Council campaign, which used "New Directions for Democrats" as its campaign slogan. Why was this election so important to Ferriero that he would override for the first time in memory the choice of a local party organization? Because he needed his three-vote majority on the five-person Englewood City Council, and he could not count on either Third Ward Councilman Scott Reddin or then Second Ward Councilman Michael Wildes (see below for Wildes’ later change of heart).
With the the Ferriero faction having maintained control, the City changed tactics and amended its Zoning Ordinance to permit "Planned Unit Development" (PUD) in the industrial area both north and south of Route 4. The PUD concept is to combine residential, office and commercial development. Under the new PUD rules, HKT submitted a plan to the Planning Board for a sizable project in the north of Route 4 adjoining the Crown Plaza Hotel property. Having been given one concession after another, a dense largely rental residential development was approved, without immediate office construction being required, and it is presently near completion.
Following this approval, HKT returned to the Planning Board with an amended version of the original project south of Route 4, similarly enabled by the PUD rules. Known as Flatrock Square, it included an office building, an 8-story hotel, 399 residential units and a parking deck. After numerous hearings before the Planning Board, during which HKT resisted the office building requirement, an agreement was reached in August, 2005. Wildes, by now Mayor, negotiated the agreement privately and presented it to the Board as a fait accompli, triggering the resignation of highly regarded Planning Board Chair Hilary Ballon. The agreement essentially provided that construction of the office building and the hotel could be delayed indefinitely, in exchange for which the residential units would be offered as condominiums instead of rental units.
In June, 2005, Ferriero’s power began, for the first time, to slip. First Ward Councilman Doug Bern was defeated in the Democratic Primary by Ken Rosenzweig, with Bern’s Ferriero affiliation having been well aired to the voters. In January, 2006, Rosenzweig took his seat on the City Council and Ferriero’s majority control ended.
Ferriero’s next move was to form an alliance with Mayor Michael Wildes, who had previously, as Councilman and Mayor, been unaligned. The significance of this alliance was (and is) dual. First, Wildes has appointed persons to the Planning Board who are mostly willing to do his bidding, and he is thus able to negotiate with Ferriero, or anyone else, from a position of strength. This was so especially since the Council had until recently effectively abdicated much of its authority over major development to the Planning Board. Second, Englewood’s Charter gives the Mayor the seldom-used power of veto over Council actions, which can only be overridden by 4 votes. The Mayor, with two allies, thus could consistently thwart the actions of a Council majority.
Now we come to 2006, with Walton’s three-year term, as well as Mayor Wildes’, drawing to a close. It was evident to anyone understanding the Englewood political scene that a truly extraordinary candidate and a strong campaign would be needed to defeat Walton’s machine backed candidacy in the June Primary. When that extraordinary candidate emerged in the person of State Assemblyman Gordon Johnson, the battle was joined. Johnson had been appalled by the events we have discussed, and was willing to add the thankless and neglibly paid ($5000 per annum) office of Councilman to his impressive resume in law enforcement and government, only out of concern for the City where he had lived most of his life. Wildes supported Walton, at first behind the scenes, having assured Johnson of his neutrality, and at the last moment out front with a recorded phone message. Johnson was elected and is now serving as one of four council members not under Ferriero’s thumb and striving to undo the damage done by their predecessors. Walton was appointed by Wildes to the Planning Board.
There are two more chapters in 2007 to this story. The Flatrock Square development was finally given a go ahead by the Wildes-dominated Planning Board earlier this year, after the office and hotel portions, and also the requirement that the residential units be designed and sold as condos, were eliminated . The newly constituted City Council then had to step in to renegotiate the agreement with the developer to include a guaranteed level of property taxes to the municipality.
The other chapter is the unsuccessful effort by Wildes ally and Planning Board Chair Marvin Anhalt to unseat anti-Ferriero Second Ward Councilwoman Charlotte Bennett Schoen in the June Democratic Primary this year. Anhalt had just presided over the aforementioned tax giveaway to HKT, while Schoen, also City Council President, had just presided over the Council’s effort to repair the damage, so logically Schoen’s victory should not have been as close as it was.
And now we have Ferriero, who plainly has no shame about abusing the political system and getting rich in the process, demanding that Gordon Johnson resign from one of his two hardly lucrative public jobs. It is plain that the boss does not like challenges to his authority and that he will stoop at little to punish those who attempt to do so.
The opening years of the twenty-first century in the City of Englewood have been a period of unprecedented building construction and also of significant political change. Figuring in both of these interrelated phenomena is the looming figure of Bergen County political boss Joseph Ferriero and his need to control megabuck development decisions in Englewood for the benefit of his law client, developer S. Hekemian Kasparian Troast LLC (HKT). The political change has been the slowly growing awareness of the Englewood electorate that certain of their elected officials were not representing them, but had become part of the powerful pay-to-play County political machine led by Ferriero. Efforts to replace those officials have by now been largely successful, but, unfortunately, the barn door may have been open too long, and we may be paying for decades for the irresponsible giveaways that have been approved.
There was good sense in the City administration’s plans as the new century started to permit denser development in our underutilized industrial area in southeast Englewood. The rationale was to reverse the declining proportion of tax revenues provided by the industrial area, and thereby to benefit residential taxpayers. Office construction, in particular, was to be encouraged, since the ratio of tax income to additional municipal expense is normally most favorable for this type of development. Where residential construction was included in mixed-use projects, condominiums should be stressed rather than rental apartments, since tax revenues from condos are significantly higher than from rental facilities. The idea was to plan for the long-term financial health of Englewood. Unfortunately, as time went on, short-term considerations, the financial needs of the developer, and the political needs of our leaders, have repeatedly been allowed to override the long-term interests of the community. Pleading an inability to sell office space, the developer has yet to build or even apply for such construction.
In 2001, HKT proposed to develop a major site in Englewood’s industrial area south of Route 4, and received the support of the City Council for their plan. The original plan, the largest ever proposed in the County, was for a large office, hotel and residential project. The City created a new redevelopment zone to accommodate the plan. It, however, received opposition from industrial property owners who objected to losing their land under eminent domain, and from citizens in neighboring Leonia, from which the property would have been accessed. In addition, there was already concern in some quarters over the close relationship which some Englewood Council members enjoyed with Bergen County boss Joseph Ferriero, whose law firm represented HKT. The plan, including the redevelopment area ordinance itself, was eventually invalidated by the courts on a legal technicality. 9/11 happened, and the developer, Ferriero, and his Englewood allies, went back to the drawing board.
Ferriero’s Englewood allies were First Ward Councilman Doug Bern, Fourth Ward Councilman Jack Drakeford, and, until his term expired at the end of 2003, Mayor Paul Fader, who made appointments to and served on the Planning Board. With significant opposition to development yet to emerge, they had little difficulty in obtaining Council or Planning Board approval for whatever measures were desired by HKT/Ferriero. The only thorn in Ferriero’s side was the Englewood Democratic Municipal Committee, under the leadership of Violet Cherry, which refused to take orders from him.
In 2003, the Municipal Committee selected Dr. Earl Marsan, a dentist, an African-American, and a 20-year member of the Englewood Board of Health, to run for the position of Councilman-At-Large. His name was submitted by the Committee Chair Cherry, to County Chair Ferriero, who under the law must designate the official Party candidate. Ferriero, claiming he had been so requested by Fader, Bern and Drakeford, endorsed instead Vernon Walton, a clergyman, also African-American, and a two-year resident, with a scant voting record. Ferriero then telephoned Marsan demanding that he withdraw, and when Marsan refused he berated him. A hard-fought primary battle ensued, which Walton, with heavy support from the County leadership, plus Congressman Rothman (but not from then County Freeholder and now State Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle), won. The developer, through an intermediary, gave $4500 to the PAC of Senator John Lynch (former Trenton power broker later convicted and jailed for corruption). The PAC, entitled New Directions for Democrats, made a similar donation to Walton’s Council campaign, which used "New Directions for Democrats" as its campaign slogan. Why was this election so important to Ferriero that he would override for the first time in memory the choice of a local party organization? Because he needed his three-vote majority on the five-person Englewood City Council, and he could not count on either Third Ward Councilman Scott Reddin or then Second Ward Councilman Michael Wildes (see below for Wildes’ later change of heart).
With the the Ferriero faction having maintained control, the City changed tactics and amended its Zoning Ordinance to permit "Planned Unit Development" (PUD) in the industrial area both north and south of Route 4. The PUD concept is to combine residential, office and commercial development. Under the new PUD rules, HKT submitted a plan to the Planning Board for a sizable project in the north of Route 4 adjoining the Crown Plaza Hotel property. Having been given one concession after another, a dense largely rental residential development was approved, without immediate office construction being required, and it is presently near completion.
Following this approval, HKT returned to the Planning Board with an amended version of the original project south of Route 4, similarly enabled by the PUD rules. Known as Flatrock Square, it included an office building, an 8-story hotel, 399 residential units and a parking deck. After numerous hearings before the Planning Board, during which HKT resisted the office building requirement, an agreement was reached in August, 2005. Wildes, by now Mayor, negotiated the agreement privately and presented it to the Board as a fait accompli, triggering the resignation of highly regarded Planning Board Chair Hilary Ballon. The agreement essentially provided that construction of the office building and the hotel could be delayed indefinitely, in exchange for which the residential units would be offered as condominiums instead of rental units.
In June, 2005, Ferriero’s power began, for the first time, to slip. First Ward Councilman Doug Bern was defeated in the Democratic Primary by Ken Rosenzweig, with Bern’s Ferriero affiliation having been well aired to the voters. In January, 2006, Rosenzweig took his seat on the City Council and Ferriero’s majority control ended.
Ferriero’s next move was to form an alliance with Mayor Michael Wildes, who had previously, as Councilman and Mayor, been unaligned. The significance of this alliance was (and is) dual. First, Wildes has appointed persons to the Planning Board who are mostly willing to do his bidding, and he is thus able to negotiate with Ferriero, or anyone else, from a position of strength. This was so especially since the Council had until recently effectively abdicated much of its authority over major development to the Planning Board. Second, Englewood’s Charter gives the Mayor the seldom-used power of veto over Council actions, which can only be overridden by 4 votes. The Mayor, with two allies, thus could consistently thwart the actions of a Council majority.
Now we come to 2006, with Walton’s three-year term, as well as Mayor Wildes’, drawing to a close. It was evident to anyone understanding the Englewood political scene that a truly extraordinary candidate and a strong campaign would be needed to defeat Walton’s machine backed candidacy in the June Primary. When that extraordinary candidate emerged in the person of State Assemblyman Gordon Johnson, the battle was joined. Johnson had been appalled by the events we have discussed, and was willing to add the thankless and neglibly paid ($5000 per annum) office of Councilman to his impressive resume in law enforcement and government, only out of concern for the City where he had lived most of his life. Wildes supported Walton, at first behind the scenes, having assured Johnson of his neutrality, and at the last moment out front with a recorded phone message. Johnson was elected and is now serving as one of four council members not under Ferriero’s thumb and striving to undo the damage done by their predecessors. Walton was appointed by Wildes to the Planning Board.
There are two more chapters in 2007 to this story. The Flatrock Square development was finally given a go ahead by the Wildes-dominated Planning Board earlier this year, after the office and hotel portions, and also the requirement that the residential units be designed and sold as condos, were eliminated . The newly constituted City Council then had to step in to renegotiate the agreement with the developer to include a guaranteed level of property taxes to the municipality.
The other chapter is the unsuccessful effort by Wildes ally and Planning Board Chair Marvin Anhalt to unseat anti-Ferriero Second Ward Councilwoman Charlotte Bennett Schoen in the June Democratic Primary this year. Anhalt had just presided over the aforementioned tax giveaway to HKT, while Schoen, also City Council President, had just presided over the Council’s effort to repair the damage, so logically Schoen’s victory should not have been as close as it was.
And now we have Ferriero, who plainly has no shame about abusing the political system and getting rich in the process, demanding that Gordon Johnson resign from one of his two hardly lucrative public jobs. It is plain that the boss does not like challenges to his authority and that he will stoop at little to punish those who attempt to do so.
