January 21,2017

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Westwood NJ,  Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi released the following statement on the state Supreme Court decision requiring municipalities to provide affordable housing for the “gap period:”

“I am deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision to enforce a gap-period. This ruling will devastate all 23 municipalities I represent and suburban municipalities throughout the state. The failure of the legislature to address the social engineering of the court should not result in changing communities forever.”

“I implore our Senate President and Assembly Speaker to do everything in their power to move forward with bi-partisan legislation addressing this issue. The court rules on what is constitutional, not aggressively ruling what it thinks is best for the state. We cannot let the court legislate what is best for individual communities.”

Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi goes on, “While ideologically I think our communities want to welcome all regardless of income levels the mandates of COAH have implications far beyond that. Many of our communities with populations under 10,000 people are facing the threat of population increases of 10 percent or more without the infrastructure, schools or services to support massive population increases. We currently receive virtually no money from the state to support our schools, our Municipalities, our infrastructure. Mandating massive building in our communities (many of which are done with PILOT agreements) without any financial help to do so will cause a significant financial burden on all. As an example the new 150 unit apartment complex with commercial components will be paying less than $1,750 per average unit per year (in property taxes and payments in lieu of taxes combined) for 30 years with slight increases based upon rental incomes received by the developers. Meanwhile every other home in the Borough is paying an average of about $12,000 per year in property taxes . That $12,000 figure is guaranteed to rise in order to make up for the shortfalls. Further, people have chosen to live in the suburbs for a reason. Prior to moving back to Bergen County I lived many years in cities including Washington, New York and London. I choose where we live today because of the open space, the small class sizes, the fact that there weren’t five or six story buildings around me. Why should the Courts be able to change the entire character of the community I live in?”