TANELLI ASKS SENATE PRESIDENT FOR COAH EXEMPTION FOR THE MEADOWLANDS

North Arlington - Council President Steve Tanelli has written to state Senate President Richard Codey asking him to amend his proposed legislation exempting the mega mall Xanadu from the state’s new affordable housing rules to include a portion of the Meadowlands region that was the former site of the EnCap development (click here for letter).

Tanelli said he will also introduce a resolution at the July 17 council meeting asking other towns to join in the fight for the exemption.

“I believe Sen. Codey realizes that the new affordable housing mandates are an economic disaster for New Jersey and I give him credit for trying to minimize their negative impacts in Southern Bergen County,” said Tanelli.

But, says the council president, Sen. Codey’s plan does not go far enough. “If the senator realizes that it is a mistake for force affordable housing construction for Xanadu, then he must also realize that it is just as big an economic mistake to force unwanted housing on old landfills controlled by the New Jersey Meadowland Commission and the adjacent properties that were targeted for the EnCap development,” said Tanelli.

Tanelli said COAH 3 will kill the state’s economy as businesses move out of state rather than pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to build housing. He cited a Sunday article in the Star-Ledger noting New Jersey is losing out to Pennsylvania in business investment competition because the state is over-regulated. He called the report troubling and worried that the meadowlands area may be losing jobs because of over-regulation and the new COAH mandates.

“COAH Round 3 will be an economic and social disaster for our communities. It will scare off likely commercial development that is appropriate to the meadowlands and will ultimately saddle our towns with far more high density housing than we can accommodate,” said Tanelli. “It will increase taxes and traffic congestion and require more government workers -- all the things we don’t’ want.”

STATE CAN’T REPEAT ENCAP BLUNDER

Tanelli said the state must not repeat the mistakes of EnCap and saddle the Meadowlands towns with North Arlington, Lyndhurst and Rutherford with thousand of housing units built on old landfills.

“All the state agencies involved with the EnCap fiasco are responsible for putting our communities through hell for the last six years. The least they can do is work to give us an exemption from one of worst mandates the state of New Jersey ever created,” said Tanelli.

The council president said the state’s mishandling of the EnCap development (which is now under state and federal investigation) cost meadowlands communities millions of dollars in lawsuits and lost development opportunities.

‘We are trying now to pull ourselves out of one economic disaster created by the state’s poor decision making, we should not be pushed immediately into another disaster created by the state,” said Tanelli.

Tanelli is authoring a resolution asking the legislature to revisit the state’s Fair Housing Act and to drastically alter it. He also said he is contemplating asking the council to file a lawsuit to overturn the latest edicts form the Council on Affordable Housing.